


Taking the Outside Line

by aseriesofbadlifechoices



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings, F/M, M/M, Nationwide Series, Oblivious Derek, Oblivious Stiles, Slow Build, nascar au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-03 07:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aseriesofbadlifechoices/pseuds/aseriesofbadlifechoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and his father co-own Stilinski Racing, a small team in the NASCAR Nationwide Series.  After yet another driver leaves the team, it's up to Stiles to find a replacement and train him in time for the 2014 season.</p><p>“Sorry, I’m--uh, Stiles. Stiles Stilinski.” Stiles stuck out his hand, but Derek ignored it in favor of crossing his arms over his chest and glaring even harder at Stiles. Stiles swallowed and brought his sweating hands back to wipe them on his pants. Behind him his friend smirked. He swore he could see Erica out of the corner of his eye making bedroom eyes at the dude.</p><p>“Well, I work at Stilinski Racing. We’re looking to recruit a new driver for next year’s Nationwide season. We’ll be holding a test session for candidates next weekend at All American Speedway.” Stiles pulled the last card from under the clip on his clipboard and extended it out in Derek’s direction. Derek snorted and snatched the card out from between Stiles’ fingertips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for this year's NaNoWriMo. I can't believe I actually wrote 50,000 words in a month. The whole thing is written, with the exception of the epilogue. I'll be posting one chapter a day until the fic is over.
> 
> Also huge thanks to the best beta ever: [puppetmasterc](http://archiveofourown.org/users/puppetmasterc)

Stiles looked up from the mess of forms scattered across his desk when he heard knuckles rapping on the doorway of his office. His father leaned against the door frame, crossing his chest, with a look on his face that Stiles knew meant nothing good.

“We’ve got a problem,” he grunted.

“Who did Jackson piss off this time? Seriously, I don’t care how good of a driver he is. I’m glad he’s leaving now. If I get dragged into the NASCAR hauler after any more races this season, I’m going to have to start buying apology gift baskets for all the officials.”

“Jackson hasn’t done anything,” his father sighed.

“Yet,” Stiles muttered darkly. “So what is our problem then?”

“Everyone we offered a ride to turned us down,” he said, moving into the room to slump down into the chair opposite of Stiles.

“Everyone?” He said with disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m afraid so,” his dad sighed into his hands. Stiles wasn’t quite ready to believe the words coming from his mouth.

“No, Shaw turned down our offer? I know he didn’t get re-signed.”

“Apparently, he got an offer from JD Motorsports.”

“Well what about Bostick?” Stiles asked, getting more and more agitated.

“He signed a two year deal to race a truck for Childress,” he huffed.

“The truck series?” Stiles practically screeched. “He took a truck ride over us? This can’t be happening,” Stiles groaned into his hands. He suddenly shot up. “Wait, what about that guy in the ARCA series we were looking at? What was his name? Elephant? Ollypants?”

“Oliphant?” he father asked with a single raised eyebrow.

“Yes!” Stiles crowed, snapping his fingers. “What about him?”

“Apparently we weren’t the only ones looking. From what I heard, he is doing something with Rousch next season.” Stiles’ head dropped between his hands to thud against his desk. 

“I can’t believe this. So what the hell are we supposed to do? It’s October already, Dad. The season is almost over.” He let out one last moan into the pile of papers his face was squished into before he pulled his head back up to stare pitifully at his father.

“Well, we could always get Kemper to come back for a season,” his dad said quietly as he peeled a post-it note off of Stiles’ forehead. 

“No!” Stiles half-shouted. “Dad, that idiot almost put us out of business once already. We built this team for mom. It’s what she always wanted, and I’m not going to let her dream die because we couldn’t figure out how to hire a new driver.”

“Well, I’m all out of ideas, kid. Every good driver out there is taken; it’s so late in the season that it’s going to be impossible to find a decent driver.” Stiles closed his eyes and tapped his fingers gently along the edge of his desk.

“Well, all the good drivers that we know of are taken. So that just means we just have to find a good driver that we haven’t heard of.” He cracked open his eyes to see his father squinting warily at him.

“What exactly are you saying Stiles?”

“Well everyone has already snatched up drivers from all the upper tiers of NASCAR and most of the better drivers from other series have been taken as well. So we just have to look where nobody else looked. We look around at local talent. I mean everyone starts somewhere. So we just have to find the next big thing before everyone else, right?”

“So what, we just snatch up some local stock car driver, throw him in a hundred thousand dollar car, and hope he can go 200 miles per hour without wrecking?”

“No, I’m not asking you to just throw any old driver in a car and hope he does well. I mean it’s impossible to know how these guys would do in an actual car. Maybe we can hold a test session. We can scout some people out then once we’ve got a pool of candidates bring in some of our backup cars and do some test runs. That way we can weed out anyone who can’t handle the cars.”

“This is going to end terribly, isn’t it?” he grumbled.

“Most likely,” Stiles sighed. “But honestly, it can’t be any worse than our season with Kemper. That man was an awful driver.”

“Fine,” his dad grunted. “There’s only five races left. I’ve got a guy that can cover your crew chief duties for the rest of the season. Jackson should be fine without you for a few races, he knows what he’s doing.” Stiles rolled his eyes with a snort. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow. I’ve got some calls to make, apparently. Let’s say eight in the conference room.” 

“Sure, sure.” Stiles nodded. As soon as his father had left the room, he collapsed back into his pile of papers. He hated this week already and it was only Tuesday. He was still exhausted from the previous weekend’s race at Dover. The long flights back from the east coast were the worst. 

This was going to be awful. This was a terrible idea. He was starting to think their team was cursed with the streak of bad luck that just wouldn’t end.

*****

The next morning Stiles stumbled into their office’s tiny, barely used conference room, coffee in one hand, notebook in the other. Stiles had assumed this meeting would be between him and his father. Stiles and John Stilinski were co-owners of Stilinski Racing, a team so small they only had the most essential personnel, which meant very few management positions. Almost every person in the company either worked on the cars at their home base in Beacon Hills, California, or was a part of the team that traveled race to race. Most did a bit of both.

However, when Stiles slipped into a seat at the end of the conference table, he was facing not only his father, but also their office manager, Erica. She was one of the few people not directly involved with the cars. Erica was also one of the few people at Stilinski Racing that Stiles was actually terrified of. He’d seen what happened to guys stupid enough to actually treat Erica like a dumb, blonde, receptionist. The girl was nothing of the sort. Stiles shivered a little at the feral-looking smile that graced Erica’s lips as he joined them.

“What’s she doing here?” Stiles asked his father, squinting suspiciously down the table at Erica. It had always been Stiles’ opinion that anyone who was capable of functioning properly before eight, was not to be trusted. He certainly didn’t trust Erica, who was looking rather awake and cheerful for such an early hour.

“Well, you know we don’t have people to spare for this plan of yours, Stiles. It’s bad enough I already have to bring in someone else to replace you as crew chief for the last five races. Everyone else I need on the road with us.”

“Are you telling me you want _her_ to help me scout for a new driver?” Stiles interrupted.

“Half of my family has raced at these tracks. I grew up at those tracks; I know the people, and I can tell the difference between the ones that can actually drive and the ones who just have rich parents and an expensive hobby.” Erica snapped at him. John sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Both of you, stop,” John barked. “Stiles, Erica may be our office manager, but she does have a lot of knowledge about the tracks I want you to check out. Erica, try not to forget we are looking for someone to drive in NASCAR, an area which Stiles wins out on expertise. I expect you both to work together on this. We need this done as quickly as possible if we’re going to have to prepare a new driver in a few months.” Stiles grumbled something unintelligible and waved his hand at Erica. She rolled her eyes back at him.

“So how are we going to do this testing?” Stiles asked, choosing to pretend like Erica wasn’t there glaring holes through him.

“Well, I’d like to have them test on an actual NASCAR track, but as we’re in California that leaves us with Sonoma and Auto Club Speedway. Sonoma is not only a road course, but not even on the Nationwide circuit, and Auto Club Speedway is in Fontana and I’d prefer not to have to transport a bunch of drivers to the opposite end of the state just for some testing. I figure our best option will be All American Speedway. They host the NASCAR Whelen series, so that’s the closest we’re going to get.”

“Okay,” Stiles began. “So we just invite a bunch of people to do some test drives at All American? How are we going to narrow this down?”

“I checked with Jerry about what we can spare for cars. We should be able to get two cars out there. The first round can just be qualifying laps. No matter how good of a driver we get, we need someone who can qualify well for us. So that should narrow things down a bit. Then I figure we can pair them up and see how they do at drafting. It goes without saying that anyone who wrecks is automatically out, and I’ll rethink my decision of going into business with my son.”

“Hey,” Stiles squawked indignantly. “Going into business with me may have been your greatest idea ever!” 

“The jury’s still out on that one, son.” His father had a fond sort of smile on his face despite how sarcastic the words sounded.

“All right, old man. I guess I’ll just have to prove you wrong then. Back to the point, though. I think we should have a second test session at a different track.”

“Two?” John croaked. “Stiles you know we’re short on people for this. We’re a small one car team in the Nationwide series. We can’t exactly afford to be going all out on some test sessions. Besides, we’re pretty limited on our local options. All the paved tracks are less than a half mile. What’s the point of switching up the tracks?”

“I get that we’ve been tight on cash, but we have to get the best driver possible, Dad. If we end up with another dud like Kemper, we’ll be done for. It will be worth it. You’re forgetting a track there, though. I don’t think we should eliminate Sonoma. It may not be on the Nationwide schedule, but we’ve still got three races at road courses. I don’t want to end up with someone who’s great at short tracks, but can’t do much else. My suggestion is we narrow it down to a smaller group of drivers at All American, and then spend a day at Sonoma.” John scratched the back of his neck, looking thoughtful.

“I hate it when you’re right, you know that, right?” He finally answered.

“You love it!” Stiles crowed gleefully. “You love my ideas,” he continued in a sing-song voice. John buried his face in his hands “You love me,” Stiles sang an exaggerated high, falsetto. Erica rolled her eyes so hard, they threatened to pop out of her head.

“I wish I worked with more adults,” John sighed wistfully.

“Hey,” Stiles chastised. “Twenty-Two. I’ve been an adult for all of four years now.”

“Sure,” John snorted, “I don’t know many adults that still wear Batman underwear.” Stiles made an outraged noise, but before he could defend his underwear choices, Erica interrupted with a loud cough.

“Boys, can we get back to business?” Stiles slumped back in his chair, arms crossed, with a hint of a pout. John looked slightly ashamed for having been reprimanded by Erica.

“Okay, then. I guess our first step is scouting drivers. Stiles, since you’re apparently the mastermind, how many drivers do you suggest we look at?” Stiles hummed thoughtfully, and tapped his pen against his notebook.

“I think twenty-five for the first round, then we narrow it down to ten for round two.”

“Sounds reasonable,” John said. Erica nodded her agreement. “I’d like to do this the last week of October. The first round at least. Round two can wait until the season ends since we’ll need more people to handle a test session at Sonoma. We’ve got a two week break after Charlotte, so we should be able to spare some people to help out then.”

“I can make arrangements for a test session at All American,” Erica said to John. “Stiles, if you can figure out what information we need for invitations, I can get that printed up on some cards to hand out.”

“Sure thing,” Stiles said with a nod. “I’ll get to work on checking out what tracks still have races going on and put together a schedule for Erica and I.”

“That all sounds good. As long as you both can agree on things together I’m fine with your decisions. Though, I still want you two to check in with me before I head out to Kansas tomorrow.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Erica replied, gathering up her notes. “I’ll update you on what we get done at the end of the day.” With that she swept out of the room, heels clicking loudly down the hallway to her office. 

“I know you and Erica don’t always see eye to eye, but I do trust her opinions, son. Please try not to piss her off too much. I don’t think I can handle replacing her, too.” Stiles shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“Ugh. Stop using your dad voice on me. I feel like I’m in middle school again. I get it. I’ll play nice. I know how important this is, Dad. I’m not going to screw it up just because Erica and I are sworn enemies.”

“I’m too old for this,” John muttered. Stiles just grinned and hurried back to his office to get started with Operation: Find New Talent. At least that’s what he was calling it. Everything sounded better with codenames, in his opinion.

*****

It didn’t take long for Stiles to bring up a listing of all the local tracks in northern California. There were five tracks within reasonable driving distance of Beacon Hills, where Stilinski Racing was headquartered. That meant he was going to have to pick on average five drivers per track. His stomach sank even lower as he clicked through to the track websites to find that only three of those five tracks still had races scheduled for October. He was starting to think his plan may be a little more flawed than he originally thought.

With a clenching feeling in his gut he printed off the schedules for the three tracks. He grabbed the sheets off the printer on his way out the door and stalked down to Erica’s desk at the front entrance to the race shop. Stiles slapped the printouts down on her desk and let out a frustrated growl.

“There’s only three tracks near us that still have races this late in the year.” Erica flicked through the pages with one of her elaborately manicured fingers. She frowned and flipped through a second time.

“Stiles, I know for a fact there’s at least four more tracks that probably still have races scheduled in October. Did you even try?”

“Of course I tried!” Stiles sputtered angrily. “There’s only five paved tracks in northern California if you’re not including Sonoma or the drag stip in Sacramento. Most of them are done with their seasons already. Only one of those tracks still has their championship race and the other two races are just post-season specials. I looked Erica. We don’t have time to drive all over the damn state for this.”

“You didn’t look hard enough,” she snapped. “You’re being too narrow minded. Sure there’s only five _paved_ tracks, but there’s just as many dirt tracks.”

“Dirt tracks?” he said scathingly. “Erica, I get it. You’re here because you know more about the local tracks, but can I remind you again that we’re looking for a driver capable of racing in NASCAR. There’s no dirt tracks on the Nationwide circuit.”

“That’s not my point you idiot.”

“Yeah? Give me two valid reasons why I should consider checking out the dirt tracks,” he spat back.

“Well, for starters, dirt racing is already making a comeback. I mean, the Craftsman Truck Series raced at Eldora this year. Look at how fast that race sold out. If NASCAR ever gets their shit together, they’ll see that dirt tracks just might be the change they need to draw fans back in. So really how long do you think it will be before we see a race on a dirt track in Nationwide. Secondly, do you even realize how many drivers started out on dirt? Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, Kasey Kahne, Clint Bowyer. Any of those names ring a bell? They all started on dirt. Stop ruling things out just because you don’t know anything about them. Your father asked me to help for a god damn reason.” 

By the end of her rant Erica looked a little pink in the face and there was a dangerous glint in her eyes that made Stiles wary. He crossed his arms and huffed out a breath.

“You’re insufferable,” he muttered, snatching the printouts back up off her desk and marching back to his office. 

He wanted to slam the door behind him out of frustration, but it would have only made him feel childish and it would have given Erica even more reason to mock him. He hated that she had made some very valid arguments, but with such a short time to find drivers, he felt unprepared to look at dirt drivers. He hadn’t seen enough dirt racing to be able to make qualified judgements, which meant he was going to have to rely on Erica. She was going to be oh so smug about this.

Stiles flopped himself back down into his desk chair with a defeated sigh. He opened his chrome tabs back up, searching for the one that had track listings. He started a new spreadsheet all the while muttering under his breath about bossy, female, know-it-alls.

Later, as Stiles was putting the finishing touches on his new schedule, Erica strode in to his office without so much as a cursory knock. The thump of the stack of cards she dropped on his desk made him jump so hard he nearly knocked his desk chair over backwards.

“You know most people knock,” he said dryly, as he clutched the front of his shirt, trying to ease his racing heart.

“It was open,” she shrugged with a hint of a smirk playing at the corner of her lips.

When his heart felt less like it was going to beat out of his chest, Stiles swiped a card off the top of the stack. There were times and dates for the first test session along with his own contact information. They actually looked pretty impressive for having been put together so quickly. He had to hand it to Erica, despite all that they butted heads about, the woman knew how to get things done. 

“You have times and dates on these already?” He questioned.

“It didn’t take long to book a day at the track. This late in the year their schedule is pretty clear. I cleared it with your dad already. I didn’t want to interrupt you.” She shrugged, flicking a lock of long, blond hair over her shoulder. “How’s the track search going?” 

“Done,” he chirped, clicking print on his spreadsheet. “Hope your schedule’s clear. First track is tomorrow.” 

“A Thursday?” Erica asked, cocking an eyebrow. She strode over to Stiles’ printer to look over the schedule he had printed off. 

“Yup. Looks like we’re starting with a dirt track then.” 

“Hmm. Not bad Stilinski. I guess we’ll talk about how we’re going to do this tomorrow. Anything else you need from me before I head out?” Stiles’ head snapped up to look at the clock on his office wall. He was shocked to see it was 5pm already.

“Nah, you’re good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Stiles scratched the back of his head as he stared fuzzily at his monitor. Going home to his couch and some Netflix sounded absolutely amazing right now, but the overbearing realization that he would be heading to a dirt track tomorrow to start recruiting drivers terrified him. He ended up wandering down the hall to the break room to stare vaguely at the glowing light emanating from the vending machines. 

Some time later a knock at the door made him tear his glazed eyes away from his computer screen. It was his father, who seemed to look just about as tired as Stiles probably looked. His eyes darted from the empty cans of Red Bull, to the pile of candy wrappers at Stiles’ elbow, then back to his face.

“Kid, what the hell are you still doing here?” he asked with an exasperated sigh.

“Research,” Stiles muttered, rubbing furiously at his eyes. “What are you still doing here?” he shot back, accusingly.

“Just some last minute changes to go over before we head out tomorrow morning. Now stop deflecting. It’s almost ten, Stiles. You’d better get home soon, I don’t want to find out you’ve been pulling all-nighters in the office again. Erica _will_ tell me. I will--well, you remember what happened last time, don’t you?” 

“You wouldn’t,” Stiles faltered, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“Oh, you know I would,” John said with a grin. “Now go home and get some sleep.”

Stiles rubbed at his eyes some more in a failed attempt to wake himself up. He cleared the pile of discarded junk food wrappers off his desk. It’s not like he couldn’t watch more youtube videos of dirt races at home. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was mostly terrified of his father’s threat.

Last time he had fallen asleep in his office, Erica had most definitely tattled on him. As punishment, his father placed him in charge of Jackson’s next signing. He thought he had gotten off easy, but it had ended up being two tortuous hours of peeling teenaged girls off of Jackson so even more ridiculous teenagers could take photos with him. The thought still made him shudder.


	2. Chapter 2

The office was eerily quiet the next morning. Stiles had never stayed behind on a race weekend before. He spent most of the morning and afternoon in the conference room with Erica looking over videos and arguing about what they should be looking for in a driver. He was glad to escape from the awkward silence of the empty building when it was finally time to head out to the first track on their list.

Thankfully, Erica had agreed to let Stiles drive. The track was an hour away and there was no way in hell he was going to spend an entire hour stuck in Erica’s car listening to her shitty pop music. There was a limit to how many times Stiles could listen to Miley Cyrus. It was a very low number. Stiles did not like Miley Cyrus. 

Erica groaned for the thousandth time as Stiles’ iPod changed from yet another All Time Low song to something by a band that she didn’t recognize called The Venetia Fair. It sounded like a mix of screamo and deranged circus music. Stiles smirked and cranked the volume a few notches higher.

“Seriously, what the hell do you even have on that thing? Do other people even listen to this crap?” she finally snapped.

“I’ve heard the music you like. I don’t think you’re in any position to judge. I’m driving. My car, my music. So shut your mouth and deal with it,” he retorted. Erica rolled her eyes, lifted her jacket up enough to cover her ears, and went back to staring pitifully out of the window.

When they got to the track it was still early enough that the bleachers were nearly empty. It looked like the gates for fans had only just opened and the cars were just starting to get out on the track for practice laps. Stiles chose a seat for them high enough to get a good view of the back stretch. Erica pulled out a pair of clipboards from the bag she had carried with her and handed one off to Stiles.

They split up the classes between each other and took turns writing down lap times and taking notes for every driver that made an appearance on the track during practice. As qualifying began the seats around them slowly started to fill, along with their log sheets. There was a break in activity between qualifying and the start of the race. Stiles and Erica put their heads together and managed to cross off a number of drivers that had done poorly enough in practice and qualifying rounds to eliminate them already.

When the actual heat races started up, it was abundantly clear that Stiles had no idea what he was looking for. He left it to Erica to jot down notes and settled for merely recording what positions the drivers finished in. After the heat races finished, Erica disappeared momentarily while Stiles idly scratched out a few more names based off of the heat race finishes. Erica reappeared just before the feature races were about to start with two beer bottles clutched in one hand and a bag of popcorn in the other. Stiles eyed her suspiciously as she sat back down, placing the popcorn on the bench between them and thrusting a beer into Stiles’ hands.

“What?” she bristled. “I can do the whole nice thing.”

“Yeah,” Stiles let out slowly. “It’s just that you doing said nice thing to me scares me a little bit.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Drink your beer and get over it. We’ve still got work to do.”

“Moment ruined,” Stiles mumbled into his beer.

“We’re not having a moment, dumbass. Now give me that clipboard. I want to see who you crossed off while I was gone.”

The feature races went by more quickly than Stiles had realized. In no time at all, he and Erica were crossing off name after name, bickering over every possible choice while people around them filed down from the bleachers. They were able to fairly quickly narrow things down to four drivers before it got too late. Stiles followed the small trickle of people down into the pit area where he and Erica split up, each with two cards in hand.

The following weekends went much the same. Stiles and Erica fought over who got to drive, the music they listened to, where the best seats were, whose turn it was to buy the beer, and who had to talk to which drivers. By the end Stiles was getting tired of sitting on bleachers and watching what appeared to be the same race over and over again. Everyone was starting to look the same to him. 

They just had one last race. It was a Saturday night race at the dirt track that was actually in Beacon Hills. Stiles had rightly assumed that they’d be sick of driving all over California by the end of this whole ordeal. There were two remaining invitation cards and Stiles was getting anxious to get to the actual test session. He didn’t have enough patience for this kind of thing.

Since it was the last night of recruitment, Stiles actually let Erica drive for once. The track was close enough that the drive wouldn’t be long enough for him to be completely annoyed with Erica’s music choices. He’s seen enough races on dirt now that it’s easy for him and Erica to cross off the drivers they don’t want during the practice sessions, qualifying, and heat races. They know what they want by now.

Stiles isn’t feeling very impressed by the majority of drivers at Beacon Hills Raceway. Erica looks like she has one or two in mind, but Stiles is feeling that nagging doubt deep, down inside that he’s making a huge mistake by doing this. The feature races fly by leaving Stiles feeling even more unimpressed by Beacon Hill’s stock of drivers.

It was in the last feature that one car finally caught Stiles’ eye, in the IMCA modified division. The car was black with a bright red number eleven painted on the side and not much else of a paint scheme. The number eleven had started dead last, and Stiles hadn’t started off paying much attention to the back of the pack. It was after the first caution, seven laps into the thirty lap race, that Stiles noticed the number eleven car had gone from last pace (twenty-second) to twelfth place. 

They guy had passed ten cars in seven laps. Stiles was intrigued. He scanned down his log sheet looking for where the number eleven was. Number eleven was driven by a Derek Hale. Surprisingly Stiles realized he’d already crossed the guy off. His qualifying results had been pretty terrible and he hadn’t done well in his heat race either. 

Stiles was even more interested, but it wasn’t uncommon for cars in NASCAR to have bad qualifying and practice sessions only to use that information to make adjustments to the car, turning it into a winning car. He circled Derek’s name and number, reminding himself not to write the guy off just yet. 

When the race got underway again, Stiles ignored the rest of the field and focused his attention solely on the number eleven. The car got off to a good start again. The lead pack had gotten away from the other cars a bit before the caution had come out, but now Derek was starting right behind them and it was easy for him to start picking them off one by one. Where a lot of other cars were reckless, taking chances at every corner, Derek was far more controlled. 

By the final ten laps of the race Derek had worked his way up to fourth place and Stiles was growing even more certain that the guy had a shot at winning it. With five to go Derek was battling for second place. As he came out of turn four he looked like he was pulling ahead of the car that had previously been in second place. Stiles watched in horror as the front of the eleven car suddenly jerked towards the right, smashing nose first into the outer wall.

Stiles winced in sympathy at the impact. It had been hard to see from his angle, but Stiles was about 90% sure the driver of the other car had been responsible for the crash. It did look like something might have broken an Derek’s car, causing him to quickly lose control and jerk to the right. At the same time the other car had been in the perfect position coming out of turn four to turn down into Derek’s car just enough to wreck him without it looking like it had been on purpose.

Stiles ran his finger down the list of drivers finding the name and number of the driver who had wrecked Hale. He felt a bit of vindictive pleasure when he crossed the guy’s name off. He didn’t even know Derek Hale, but he hated the kind of driver who purposely took other guys out of the race. 

He turned his attention back to the track where there was now a tow truck and an ambulance pulled up next to Derek’s car. The crowd let loose a polite round of applause as Derek dropped his window net and pulled himself out of the driver’s side window. He pulled off his helmet, tossing it angrily back through the window of his car and waved off the EMTs in favor of getting straight into the cab of the tow truck.

When Derek’s car was clear of the track, the last five laps of the race were finished. They were uneventful and the same driver who had been leading for the past fifteen laps was the one who made it to the winner’s circle. Stiles tapped his pen thoughtfully against his clipboard and drew another lazy circle around Derek’s name. Erica turned to Stiles and listed off the top drivers on her list.

“I’m thinking Clarke, Weaver, Tucker, or Greene. Who were your top picks?” Stiles looked down at his clipboard and realized he hadn’t paid any attention at all to the other drivers he was supposed to. All he knew was that he wanted Hale.

“I don’t care. Pick your favorite. I want Hale, though.”

“Hale?” She asked, flipping back through her notes. “We already eliminated him, though.”

“Well I’m un-eliminating him. I don’t know. I’ve just got a feeling about him.”

“A feeling?” Erica said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Yes. A feeling,” he said tightly. “What does it matter. If he turns out to not be any good we’ll have twenty-four other drivers to choose from.”

“All right, all right,” she relented. “We’ll take Hale and Clarke then. Let’s go get this over with.”

Clarke’s pit stall was one of the first they reached when they entered the pits. Erica handed off the invitation with her short spiel on what Stilinski Racing was offering and instructions on how to contact them if he had any questions. While she was talking Stiles scanned the pit area for Derek’s car. He spotted him at the far end of last row of pit stalls, battered car sitting at the open end of his trailer.

When they were finished up with Clarke, Stiles led Erica in the direction of Derek’s pit stall. They reached the car to see two backs hunched over the open, crumpled hood of the car. One clad in a black fire suit that had been unzipped halfway and tied around the guy’s waist, and another one wearing battered jeans and a tight fitting, grease stained t-shirt. Stiles let out a small cough to alert the two men of their presence.

The man in the firesuit, who Stiles thought it was safe to assume was Derek Hale, jerked upward, nearly knocking his head on the hood of the car. He cursed under his breath, before backing up so he could stand upright and look at Stiles and Erica. 

“Can I help you?” he growled, glaring holes through Stiles. 

“Uh,” Stiles faltered, caught off guard. Derek Hale was the kind of gorgeous that was so intense it was a little bit frightening. His black hair was messy from his helmet and he had a dusting of dark stubble along his jaw that was devastatingly good looking on his pointed features. The part of his upper torso that had been freed from his fire suit showed off a body that had clearly spent a lot more time at the gym than Stiles had.

“If you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of busy. So if you want something spit it out already or stop wasting my time,” Derek spat out angrily. God, even pissed off, the guy looked attractive as hell. At this point the other guy working on Derek’s car had surfaced from under the hood. He was tall, with dark skin and short hair, and if possible even more muscular than Derek. Jesus he hadn’t realized models were into motorsports.

“Sorry, I’m--uh, Stiles. Stiles Stilinski.” Stiles stuck out his hand, but Derek ignored it in favor of crossing his arms over his chest and glaring even harder at Stiles. Stiles swallowed and brought his sweating hands back to wipe them on his pants. Behind him his friend smirked. He swore he could see Erica out of the corner of his eye making bedroom eyes at the dude.

“Well, I work at Stilinski Racing. We’re looking to recruit a new driver for next year’s Nationwide season. We’ll be holding a test session for candidates next weekend at All American Speedway.” Stiles pulled the last card from under the clip on his clipboard and extended it out in Derek’s direction. Derek snorted and snatched the card out from between Stiles’ fingertips.

“You handing these out to everybody?” He asked scanning over the card. I was Stiles’ turn to look skeptical. He gave Derek his best ‘bitch please’ face.

“I don’t have time to waste putting every mediocre asshole that thinks he’s the next Jeff Gordon in a hundred thousand dollar car. That invitation is for you and you only. My number is at the bottom if you have questions.” The guy standing behind Derek let out a short laugh, before ducking back under the hood of the ruined car. There was the barest hint of a smirk playing at the corner of Derek’s lips.

“Did you hand one of these out to anybody here?” He asked with interest.

“We gave one to Dustin Clarke,” Erica supplied. Derek nodded his head slightly as if he approved of their choice. Without another word Derek turned his back on them and re-joined his friend under the hood of his car, slipping the card into his pocket.

“Wait,” Stiles yelped. “Are you coming or not?”

“I’ll think about it,” a voice called out from under the car hood. Erica looped her arm around Stiles’ shoulders and started steering him towards the parking lot.

“That’s not an answer,” Stiles yelled back over his shoulder.

“Well, it’s the only one you’re going to get,” the voice answered.


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles paced the area of the pits where the Stilinski Racing hauler was parked, loaded up with two older models of Nationwide cars that the boys at the shop had prepped for test runs. One by one the drivers who had received invitations trickled in to gather around the hauler where the few crew members that could be spared unloaded the two cars. Stiles mumbled under his breath counting the number of people he saw. Erica was weaving around the small crowd checking off names from the clipboard resting in the crook of her arm. Stiles checked his watch one last time as his leg jiggled impatiently and his fingers tapped restlessly against his crossed arms. Erica joined him at the front of the crowd, ten minutes after they were scheduled to begin.

"Everyone here?" He asked Erica out of the corner of his mouth.

"All but one," she replied holding out her clipboard for Stiles to see. The only name on the list without one of Erica's tiny check marks next to it was Derek Hale. Stiles sighed softly, trying to hide his obvious disappointment. 

"All right!” Stiles yelled, clearing his throat to get everyone’s attention. “We’re ready to get started. We’re going to start out with some qualifying laps. Anyone who didn’t come with a fire suit, helmet, or driving shoes, go talk to my friend Isaac over at the end of the hauler.” He pointed over to a young man with a mop of curly blond hair waving his arm at the drivers. 

“Erica, here, is going to call you all off one by one from her list there. When your name is called off, you’re going to head over to Scott over there. Scott, wave your hand please.” Another crew member with tanned skin, dark hair, and a lopsided grin waved enthusiastically from where he was standing by the front of one of the cars.

“Scott is going to give you all a quick once over with the car and help get you buckled in. Everyone is going to get ten laps on the track for the first round. Five of those laps are for you to get comfortable with the car. After those five warm up laps we will be timing you. Any damage to the car and you’ll automatically be disqualified. When everyone’s had a turn at qualifying I’ll be back down here to explain part two. Good luck.” 

He heard Erica calling off the first name as he made his way out of the pits and up to the bleachers where he could get a good view of the entire track and the scoreboard. There was a track official on hand who had set up the timing box and the scoreboard so Stiles could easily see the lap times for every driver. On his way up he noticed a tall figure in a black fire suit, helmet hanging from one hand standing at the edge of the gate leading into the pit area.

He strode out to meet the man, only to find it was in fact his one missing driver, Derek Hale. Hale looked unsure of himself, like he wasn’t even sure of how he had ended up here. As Stiles approached he leaned against the gate, scowling like Stiles had personally offended him already.

“You’re late,” Stiles stated. Derek gave a small, noncommittal shrug. “I didn’t think you were going to show up.”

“Neither did I,” Derek muttered towards the ground.

“Well, we’re just getting started. Head down to the hauler and go find Erica. You remember what she looks like, right? She can explain things and make sure you’re ready. I’ve got to get up there before they get out on the track.” Derek pushed himself up off the gate post and walked off into the pits, leaving Stiles in silence. 

Stiles hurried up the walkway to the bleachers when he hear the roar of an engine being brought to life. He dashed up the stairs to one of the upper rows and tossed his clipboard down on the metal bleacher. He then unclipped the walkie talkie that had been clipped to his jeans. 

“Go ahead, Erica. I’m all good on my end.” He waited a second and then his walkie started to crackle.

“Copy that. First driver is Steadman. Sending him out now.”

His stomach roiled with excitement and anticipation. He still wasn’t sure if this was going to turn out to be his best idea yet, or if it was going to be so bad that the team would go under. It was a lot of pressure and all he could do was hope for the best. 

Steadman drove the car out onto the track and Stiles silently prayed that he wasn’t going to wreck the car. At least he was one of the drivers they had picked up from one of the asphalt tracks. Still, the Nationwide cars were a bit more complicated than your typical late model car and Stiles didn’t think he could bear it if he had to bring a damaged car back to the shop. His father would give him that stupid ‘I told you so’ face. He hated that face.

One by one each driver took their turn, taking the first few laps a little bit slower, then bringing the car up to full speed to run five qualifying laps. Stiles furiously copied down lap times and added a few notes here and there when he deemed it necessary. Half way through one of the drivers lost control of the car for just a moment, sending it into the beginning of a spin before managing to stop it mere inches from the wall. Stiles’ heart practically exploded out of his chest. He drew an asterisk next to that driver’s name to remind him later.

Finally it was down to the last driver--Derek Hale. Stiles smiled and unconsciously crossed his fingers. He knew he was supposed to be fair and not pick favorites. After all the team was relying on someone who could race well in order for them to be able to stay in business. However, Stiles couldn’t help but feel a little more generous when it came to Derek. Maybe it had something to do with that gut feeling that had led him to choosing Derek in the first place.

Logically, Stiles knew it made no sense. Derek had barely said more than a handful of sentences to him. He had mostly glared at Stiles and acted like actually speaking to him was below him. Really, he’d been kind of a jerk to Stiles. A ridiculously hot jerk, but a jerk nonetheless. Maybe it just had something to do with Stiles’ pathological need to be liked by everyone. Nobody hated Stiles, nobody. 

Derek Hale was not going to be the exception to that rule. He was just a puzzle that Stiles hadn’t found all the pieces to yet. Stiles was just starting to lay down the edge pieces, but he had a long way to go if he wanted to fill in the middle. That was only going to happen if Derek turned out to be the driver Stiles was so desperately hoping he was.

He practically held his breath as Derek navigated the car out onto the track. Derek took his first few laps around the track at half speed, feeling out the track. After Stiles had counted out five laps, he watched Derek’s every move intently. He jotted down the first lap time, it was a little slow, but Stiles wasn’t giving up on him yet. The second lap was a bit better, but there was still room for improvement. Derek’s third lap put him around the middle of the pack. His fourth and fifth practically blew the competition away. 

Stiles scrolled down his list quickly picking out the drivers with the top lap times. Derek’s last two lap times definitely put him somewhere in the top five out of all the drivers. He couldn’t help but feel a little pleased. As long as Derek did well in the second half of testing, Stiles would get to call him back for round two.

He scrambled off the bleachers, leaving his clipboard behind for the moment, and jogged back down to the pit area. Most of the drivers were crowded around the same side of the hauler where they had started earlier. Stiles made it down in time to see Derek drop the window net on the car and pull himself out of the driver’s side window. He waited patiently for Derek to unbuckle his helmet and join the rest of the group before starting.

“Great job guys,” He yelled over the murmuring, causing the group of drivers to fall silent. “Now we can move on to part two. As you know we’re looking for a driver to compete in the Nationwide Series next year. Unlike the Sprint Cup, the Nationwide Series has moved from single car qualifying to group qualifying. Now we only had two cars to spare, but that’s going to have to do. Since there’s an odd number of you, everyone is going to get to go twice. Erica will pair you up and you’ll have five laps each time. I want you to start side by side at the start/finish line, the flag man will give you the yellow flag and you’ll have two pace laps for which you will stay side by side, when he waves the green flag I want you to race your partner for those five laps. Any questions?” No one raised their hands. “Good. Let’s get started then.”

Stiles jogged back up to his spot in the bleachers as Erica called off a pair of names from her clipboard. If the qualifying laps had been nerve wracking, then this was going to be absolute torture. In the few moments that he had to wait for the first two drivers to get strapped in and ready to drive, he had a brief waking nightmare of a horrific wreck that totaled both of their test cars. He took deep calming breaths until he heard his walkie talkie crackle.

“Sending out Hale and Pike first. Hale’s in the white.” The two test cars they had brought out to the track were identical. In order to be able to tell them apart for this part of the test session, Stiles had used some black electrical tape over the normally white number 9 on both sides of one of the cars.

“Roger that,” he radioed back. 

With two cars on the track the timing box was useless to him, so he had to rely more now on watching how they handled the cars, and of course who crossed the finish line first. Both drivers lined up at the start/finish line directly in front of Stiles. The track official who was up in the flag stand glanced back at Stiles, who gave him a thumbs up to say he was ready. At his signal, the flagman dropped his arm holding the yellow flag over the two cars and waved.

The two cars left the line weaving back and forth to warm up their tires. When they reached the third corner of their second pace lap both drivers hit the throttle and their cars revved up to full speed through the last corner to the finish line. They crossed the line at the same time, Pike pulled ahead of Derek coming out of the first two corners and Stiles’ stomach dropped just a little bit. Derek had started on the outside and by the end of the first lap had fallen behind and had dropped down to the inside lane of the track, in line behind Pike.

Stiles was chewing nervously at his lip by the time they had completed their second lap. Pike hadn’t really gained a lot of speed on Derek, but Derek was still racing the inside line behind Pike. Derek’s motives became apparent in the third lap. Pike took his first turn too widely, giving Derek enough space to edge the nose of his car in below Pike’s forcing Pike to move up the track until they were side by side again, but this time with Derek on the inside. Though Pike wasn’t able to get up enough speed to fully pass Derek again, he still had about half a car length on him.

Without even realizing it, Stiles was clutching his clipboard so hard it was leaving indents in his palms. The two cars were neck and neck as they were rounding out their last lap. Derek crossed the finish line a hair’s breadth ahead of Pike. He let out a huge breath of air, easing up on his death grip around his clipboard. Pike pulled off the track, while Derek brought his car around to idle at the start/finish line.

Stiles wrote down some notes while he was waiting. He put a star next to Derek’s name, the winner of the round, however he made a note not to count out Pike just yet. It had been some fairly impressive driving from both drivers. He just hoped the rest of the races didn’t get that intense or he’d never be able to make a decision. Erica’s voice crackled over his walkie once more.

“I’m switching out Pike with Clarke.”

“Copy that,” he replied into his walkie. 

He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed that Derek’s five laps with Clarke went by far too quickly. Derek started from the outside again, this time easily passing Clarke from the position he started in. He had almost a full car length on the other driver by the time their five laps were up. Clarke had been far too cautious with the car and it had affected his speed.

They switched out driver after driver until every driver had gotten two turns against a different person. There were plenty more disappointing pair-offs, but there had still been a few more that had made Stiles sit on the edge of his seat. At least he had enough data that he thought he’d be able to narrow down the pool of drivers without too much difficulty.

When the last pair of drivers had completed their laps, Stiles gathered up his notes to rejoin Erica in the pits. A few of the drivers were helping Scott and Isaac load up the two cars into the hauler, the rest were milling about aimlessly, chatting about how they thought they did. He checked in with Erica to make sure she had gathered the contact information for every driver. When he was satisfied with her notes, he stuck two fingers in his mouth, letting out a high pitched whistle. Erica cringed next to him, giving him a filthy look.

“Thanks for coming out today,” he shouted to the small crowd. “Erica should have come around and gotten everyone’s contact information. If you think there is anything you forgot to tell her, let us know now. We will be making a decision this week and narrowing it down to ten drivers. So ten of you will have the opportunity to join us for a second session at Sonoma. If you have any questions let us know, you all should have my number. If not, then you’re all free to leave. Thanks for your time.”

Most of the drivers filtered out of the pit area when Stiles was done, but a few remained behind looking to ask him some questions. He couldn’t help but feel a little bit disappointed that Derek wasn’t one of them. He ended up stuck answering an endless barrage of questions from a guy named Greenberg. Stiles realized halfway through the conversation that the reason why he recognized the name was because he was the driver who nearly put the car into the wall during the first set of qualifying laps.

By the end of the conversation he was struggling to remember what he and Erica had been thinking when they had handed him an invitation. Maybe it had been at that track where they had had a few too many beers. He was sure he was going to have nightmares tonight where Greenberg was their driver and he wrecked everything he touched.

He sighed with relief when Greenberg finally ran out of questions for him and left the track. Scott and Isaac had long ago loaded up all the cars and were waiting patiently with Erica for him to wrap things up. Erica gave him a knowing smirk as he rolled his eyes heavily at Greenberg’s retreating form. It had been a long day and Stiles was looking forward to a nice nap when he got home.

“On Monday remind me to cross Greenberg off of our list first. Seriously, was I high when I gave him an invitation. How the hell did that happen?” He moaned to Erica.

“I tried to tell you,” she laughed, “but you were being a stubborn asshole. At least it looks like we’ll be seeing Hale again,” she said with an obvious wink.

“Ugh. Don’t even start with that. I don’t even know why I like him. He looks like he wants to choke me to death every time I talk to him. Apparently my fight or flight instincts don’t kick in around hotness of that magnitude.” Scott snorted at him.

“Maybe he’s just into auto-erotic asphxiation,” Erica mused like she was actually imagining that in her head. Scott snorted loudly and tried to turn it into some sort of awkward, hacking cough while Isaac looked like he was going to bite through his lip, trying not to smile.

“I hate all of you. You’re all fired,” he howled back over his shoulder, as he stomped off to his car.

“You love us and you can’t get rid of us that easily,” Erica yelled back.

*****

Monday came and went quickly. To Stiles’ surprise Erica and his father agreed with most of his choices. There were only a handful of drivers that they actually argued over and only one of those arguments was actually difficult to settle. Stiles’ was much relieved when they had all easily agreed at the start of their meeting that Greenberg could be crossed off. 

The rest of the afternoon they spent figuring out the details for the second session and Erica was sent off to start calling the drivers who were to be invited back for round two. For now the last test session was getting put on the back burner. They had some good drivers figured out and now Stiles needed to get back to his actual job and focus on the last two races of the season.

Jackson Whittemore, their current driver was insufferable for the remaining two races. Ever since he had signed a contract with Joe Gibbs Racing to fill the car Brian Vickers was vacating, his head had swelled to an obnoxious size. He acted like the fact that he had scored a contract with such a great team made him an expert at every aspect of the sport. 

Granted, he did have some good insights some of the time, but Stiles was the crew chief and they were actually supposed to make decisions together. Stiles nearly had an aneurysm at Phoenix when Jackson ignored his command to pit and waited for another lap only to have a caution come out. He ended up a lap down near the end of the race and turned what could have been a top ten race into a sixteenth place finish.

Thankfully, Jackson seemed to listen slightly more to his father and after a thorough ass chewing where he was reminded of his contract terms. Their last race ended on a high note with a fourth place finish. Stiles didn’t hate Jackson per se, but he wasn’t exactly sad to see him go. Jackson was difficult to work with, he was headstrong and never happy unless he had exactly his way.

Still their 2013 season had easily been their best so far. They hadn’t struggled nearly as much as to gain sponsorships for the car and had actually made a decent profit for the year. To bad that was all on the line now with a new, inexperienced driver, that no one has ever heard of. Stiles just hoped that whoever they chose turned out to be easier to work with than Jackson had been.

*****

As the days grew closer to the second test round, Stiles started to get anxious again. It had been one thing for just Scott and Isaac to get a look at the drivers he and Erica had chosen, but the second test session was a much bigger deal. Since they were testing at a road course track, they needed multiple team members to be posted around the track to be able to record data from every area of the track. Worst of all, his father would be there this time.

Stiles may own half of the company, but it was no secret that it was John who was in charge. It wasn’t that Stiles didn’t have the know how to run a NASCAR team, but people often had a hard time taking him seriously. It didn’t help that he was only twenty-two. People needed someone like his father to give the orders, but Stiles was there behind the scenes to come up with all the good ideas. It was bad enough that he was the crew chief. It had been years since NASCAR had seen someone as young as him become a successful crew chief. He was dying to prove that he was capable.

When the day had come, Stiles found himself once again pacing to and fro in front of the team’s main hauler, waiting for everyone to be ready. It was less of a crowd of drivers this time around, which for some reason only made him feel more nervous. At least this time he didn’t have to worry about Derek coming. He arrived on time this time and stood with the rest of the drivers, tracking Stiles’ movements with an amused expression playing across his face. 

Scott was still out testing the one car they had prepared to race at the road course. Scott was kind of their odd jobs guy. He was a jack of all trades when it came to racing. He was halfway decent when it came to driving a car, at least when it came to testing purposes; he had in infinite knowledge when it came to fixing the cars; and in a pinch could fill in for any of the pit crew members. Stiles still wasn’t sure while Scott had decided to come work for Stilinski Racing, but Scott was hands down probably his favorite employee.

When Scott made it back to the pit stall and climbed out of the car, giving Stiles a thumbs up, Stiles turned to the drivers to finally begin round two. 

“Okay guys,” he started. He didn’t need to shout this time with so few people. “We’re going to run things similar to the first session. We’ve only got one car for today so we’ll only be doing single car qualifying laps. Most of you are pretty unfamiliar with road course racing, but with three road course tracks on the 2014 schedule we need to be sure whoever we sign can handle this kind of racing. Like last time, you’ll get some warm up laps before your qualifying laps. Since this is a much longer track, you guys will have two laps to warm up, after that it’s three timed laps and then you’ll head back to our spot on pit road. Any questions?” Once again there was silence.

Stiles grabbed his clipboard and started his long trek up to his designated position at the top of the main grandstand, just around the corner from pit lane. The team had a number of pit crew member positioned around the course to track data for each driver. Erica had come up with pre-filled forms for every team member with the driver order and areas for them to fill out notes on what they most wanted to pay attention to. Stiles looked down at his own list for the first time to see Derek’s name at the very end.

A few cars in and it was clear this was going to be a hard decision. So far none of the drivers were really blowing the others out of the water. None of them had been spectacular at the course and they all seemed to have a few moments that made Stiles’ heart skip a beat out of fear, but they had all proved that they could at least handle a road course car with some degree of proficiency. 

Although, Stiles was only seeing a portion of the track. To be fair, the three corners he had a good view of were by no means the hardest areas of the track. He hoped his crew would have some more helpful notes on what happened across the rest of the course. By the time Derek was up, Stiles had only marked down two drivers that he was certain he wanted to eliminate. Hopefully he wouldn’t be adding Derek to that list.

He bit his lip as he saw the car take off from pit road for the tenth time, presumably with Derek inside. The car started of rather slow. It kept it’s pace at half speed for the entire first lap. Stiles guessed that he wanted to feel out the track as best he could and tried to remember that they were only judging the three qualifying laps. 

The three qualifying laps were less than stellar for Derek. They were by no means the worst, but Stiles now felt a modicum of doubt about Derek’s shot at becoming the new face of Stilinski racing. There was still hope for him though. John thought it would be helpful for the drivers to go through a full pit stop for round two. Just maybe that and Derek’s results from the first test session would be enough. He knew Erica would give him shit about obsessing over Derek, but it wasn’t just his looks. Stiles just had a gut feeling about Derek that he wasn’t getting for anyone else.

He jogged down the grandstand stairs and through the open gate to the garage/pit area. The drivers were of course already waiting, but they had to wait for a while for the rest of the crew that had been stationed around the farther areas of the course. Erica elbowed him in the ribs when he sat down on the wall next to her.

“Stop pouting. It’s their first times on a road course. Don’t expect miracles just yet. You’ll have plenty of time to train with whoever we pick. I’m sure they’ll get better.” Stiles nodded his head.

“Yeah, I know. I guess I was just hoping that one of the guys would secretly be a natural at this and make our decision super easy.”

“Oh? And which driver were you hoping for? Hale? You know you’re supposed to be unbiased about these test runs. No playing favorites, Stiles. This is about who the best driver is. We’re not going to get sponsorships based on how hot our driver it.”

“Shut up,” he sighed. “It’s not like that. I just have a feeling about him. Well, I did. I’m not so sure now, but I think he could do it. Whatever. It’s not like I’m making this decision by myself. My dad is going to be a pretty big part of this whole decision process.”

“Well, looks like the truck’s coming with the rest of the guys. Time for pit stops!” She hopped off the pit wall and held out a hand for Stiles to pull himself up with. He closed his eyes and groaned, but took her proffered hand anyway.

The drivers gathered along the side of the hauler once more, while the returned crew members busied themselves by putting together their pit stall. Stiles cleared his throat once more, making sure every driver was now paying attention to him. 

“Great job, everybody. The last thing we want to look at is pit stops. Yes. I’m aware that the majority of the work in a pit stop is not done by the driver, however if the driver and the crew can’t effectively work together we end up with shitty pit stops. Depending on the race just one shitty pit stop can ruin our entire day. So here’s the deal everyone will get one shot at doing a pit stop with the crew.” Stiles turned his back to them looking out over the track.

“You’re going to start out by taking the track connecting turn twelve here with the straightaway between turns ten and eleven.” He pointed out to the section of track he had just described. “From there you’ll get up to full speed, taking turn eleven until you come to the entrance of pit road. Your first job is to make sure you don’t speed on pit road, so keep a close eye on your RPMs. Driving too slow is also not an option. We will be timing these stops. An excellent stop is around thirteen seconds, fifteen seconds is an average stop, anything past that is where I start getting pissed at you. So pay attention to my signals and get your ass in and out when I tell you to.” He gave the one driver in the front row who had been grinning nonchalantly a hard stare. 

“You better make sure that you have the entire car in the pit stall. The crew is going to do a four tire stop along with gas. We won’t actually be putting more gas into the car, but the gas man is going to hold the can there for the amount of time it normally takes to fill the tank. I’ll be on the radio, when I give you the signal, exit pit lane, again maintaining pit road speed and stop the car just outside the exit of pit road.” Erica took up the explanation where Stiles left off.

“I will be calling off names again in the order you will be doing pit stops. We’ll be switching out drivers at the entrance to turn one, near the tunnel. Hale you’re up first, so you can stay here with the car, everyone else follow me.” She waved her arm at the remaining nine drivers and led them off to the opposite side of the main grandstands to wait their turns.

The pit crew had just about finished setting up the pit stall in the time it had taken Stiles to explain what they would be doing. They had set up the pit box just behind the wall where Stiles would be sitting, overseeing the stops and giving instructions just as if it were during an actual race. Four tires were lined up just behind the wall and all the crew member stood ready with suits zipped up and helmets buckled on. One of the pit crew members had also left the truck parked in the stall behind theirs just to make it a bit more challenging for the drivers to make it into their stall.

“You ready to go?” He asked Derek, who looked pale as he fiddled with the strap on his helmet. He gave Stiles a curt nod.

“I’m good.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be on the radio the whole time talking you through it.”

“How comforting,” Derek replied dryly, before jamming his helmet on over his head.

Stiles gave him a wry grin as he climbed up onto the pit box. He watched as one of the crew members helped strap Derek into the car. He adjusted the headset so it sat more comfortably over his ears before switching it on.

“Derek do you copy?” He spoke into the radio mike.

“I hear you, Stiles,” the slightly tinny voice replied through his headset.

“All right, Derek, start the car whenever you’re ready and head out to the other side of turn eleven.”

The roar of the car coming to life sounded muffled through his headset. He looked down, getting thumbs up from his crew members stating their readiness. Derek steered the car down pit road and guided it the wrong way down the track to make it to the narrow strip of blacktop that connected with the opposite side of the track.

“Ready?” Stiles asked as Derek reached the straightaway. He didn’t wait for a response from Derek. “All right then, full speed ahead.” Derek punched the gas and went roaring into the hairpin turn, braking some, but still trying to maintain a similar speed to what he would be going in an actual race.

“Good, good, now come on down pit lane. Careful, watch your speed.” He coached. “You’re doing great. Now into the stall. Ok, you’re good.” Derek stopped the car perfectly in the white rectangle of the pit stall, front end even lined up perfectly with the corner of tape they had laid down. Six guys hopped over the wall. Jacking the car up and changing tires with a practiced ease. The second the last guy was clear of the car Stiles snapped “You’re clear” into his radio.

Derek sped out of the pit stall, taking the car the rest of the way down pit lane and stopping just after the exit line. Stiles smiled at how easily that had gone.

“That was a great stop, Derek.” Stiles said into his radio. He didn’t get a response, but he hadn’t really been expecting one from Derek. 

He saw Derek climb out of the car to be replaced by the next driver on this list. The pit stops went smoothly for the most part. A few drivers went a little too fast down pit road, but there were no other major slip-ups. Erica dismissed the drivers after they had wrapped everything up, and joined Stiles and John back in the pit area where the crew was loading up. 

“Well, that didn’t go nearly as bad as I had imagined,” Erica said cheerily.

“I have to say, I’m actually pretty impressed,” John said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We might just do all right with one of these guys. I guess I’ll see you two Monday morning to start discussing the matter.”

*****

Stiles spread all of his notes out on the coffee table in his apartment. He dragged out his laptop to start making a spreadsheet to compare all the driver data side by side. The more he read of everyone’s notes, the more he realized that he couldn’t in good conscience pick Derek. Sure he had done well at just about everything, but his results for the qualifying laps at Sonoma were the second worst of the group. That was a deal breaker.

He definitely had some reconsidering to do when it came to what the Sonoma results had shown him. Brewer had been one of the drivers from round one that had just barely made the cut for round two. Erica had argued with him for a long time over their last pick, but apparently Stiles had made the right decision. Brewer had been the ninth driver out on the track and he had driven almost like a natural.

His results were surprisingly good for someone who apparently knew so little about road course racing. As he started paging through his driver profiles again he began to come to terms with the fact that Derek Hale was not going to be their new driver. Life just wasn’t fair.

****

_This is it,_ he thought as he strode in to his office on Monday morning. _Today I’m going to find out who I’m going to be saddled with for the next season._ After moping most of the weekend, he had come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t going to be Derek Hale. He had run through every scenario possible in his head, but none of them seemed to end with being able to convince his dad that Derek Hale was the right pick.

He walked into the conference room at exactly nine on the dot. Erica and his father were already waiting impatiently for him to arrive. His father gave him a pointed look.

“What?” He asked. “It’s nine. I’m not late. Stop looking at me like you’ve been expecting me for the past hour or something. Geeze.”

“Just sit down so we can get started already, Stiles,” John sighed.

They started off the morning, by looking at who they thought had done the worst between both sessions. The three of them had fairly easily agreed on three drivers that they could eliminate for sure within the first hour of discussions. Stiles wrinkled his nose in surprise that neither of them had mentioned Derek so far. He knew Erica was probably trying to be nice since she knew Stiles had a pretty ridiculous crush on the guy already, but his father wasn’t blind. Surely he saw how terrible Derek had run. When his father mentioned eliminating Brewer, Stiles made a strangled noise in the back of his throat.

“Brewer? He had one of the best runs this weekend, why the hell do you want to eliminate him?” His father frowned down at his own notes.

“Are we looking at the same driver?” He asked in confusion. “Brewer nearly wrecked the car going through the chicane of all things, and even though he was fast, he wasn’t fast enough compared to Hale.”

“Wait, what? Brewer was the second to last one on the track, right?”

“Stiles, Brewer was the last driver to go. Didn’t Erica tell you about the switch?”

“The switch,” he asked, voice climbing an octave or so.

“Sorry, thought I told you,” Erica said easily. “Brewer told me he had to go to the bathroom all of ten seconds before he had to get in the car, so I had Hale go ninth and Brewer went last instead.”

“Well, that changes things,” Stiles said staring wide-eyed down at his notes.

“It’s almost time for lunch,” John declared. “Let’s take a break to get some food and that should give you time to change your notes, son.”

“Sure, sure,” Stiles agreed faintly.

“Good, let’s see it’s about eleven now, so lets just be back at noon to finish this up over the afternoon.”

“Oh my God, you are the worst,” Stiles hissed at Erica as soon as his father left the conference room. “You did that on purpose. I can’t believe you.” Erica cackled madly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. Sorry, it was just too good of an opportunity. Is that why you were all sour-faced during the pit stop portion? You really thought he did terribly, didn’t you?”

“So?” He didn’t have a good comeback for once. He just crossed his arms and glared tight-lipped back at Erica.

“Hey, if anything you should be thanking me. At least now you know that you are picking him because he can actually drive, not just because you want to lick his face.” She had a smug smile on her face, and he wasn’t about to admit that she actually had a pretty decent point. 

“I don’t want to lick his face,” he snapped defensively. “Ugh, why do I have to work with you? You’re buying me lunch for this. Come on, let’s hurry up and eat. I need some time to rework _all_ of my notes because of a certain someone.” Erica rolled her eyes in response.

“Fine. Lunch is on me, but we’re eating at the coffeeshop I like. There’s only so many times I can eat curly fries, Stiles. I’m pretty sure I hit my monthly limit in like the first week of November.” Stiles made a face and poked his tongue out.

Things were looking up after lunch. Stiles had about twenty minutes in his office to rework his spreadsheets. Derek’s stat sheet was actually looking pretty damn good now, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up only to have them smashed all over again.

Two hours passed and there was surprisingly not a lot of arguing over drivers. They carefully weighed pros and cons of every driver, but in the end it was a unanimous decision. Derek Hale would be the 2014 driver for Stilinski Racing. It felt like there was a balloon expanding in Stiles’ chest. Now he just had to make sure he could prepare Derek enough for an actual Nationwide race and they’d be golden.


	4. Chapter 4

A week later Stiles found himself back in the Stilinski Racing conference room with his father, their lawyer, and Derek Hale. His father explains the contract in terms of what it will mean for Derek in the racing world. Their lawyer clarifies the legal aspects of it. Stiles, well he’s not really sure why he’s there other than being co-owner of the company. He mostly just sits and listens and tries not to fall asleep.

John leaves Stiles in charge of Derek. He has more important things to oversee. It makes sense anyway. Stiles is the crew chief; he has to work the closest with Derek. They need to understand each other, finish each others sentences by the time next season starts. Not to mention that this was Stiles idea in the first place so he has to deal with the consequences.

Stiles drags Derek back to his office after all the paperwork has been signed. Derek looks bored and Stiles can’t understand how someone who was given an opportunity to jump into a career in NASCAR can show so little enthusiasm. 

“Alright, so tomorrow’s Friday so it doesn’t really make sense to start your training schedule until next week. I’ll show you around the shop tomorrow and introduce you to everyone and then we can go over what you’ll be doing over the next few months. For now, do you have any questions for me?”

“Wait, training schedule? Next week? The first race isn’t until February. The end of February. Are you telling me that I’m going to be spending three months doing training?” Derek as usual was scowling at Stiles. The guy seriously needed to learn some new facial expressions.

“Of course you’re going to be training for three months,” Stiles snapped with annoyance. “You’ve been in a Nationwide car twice, and those were just our test cars. You are completely unprepared for what it’s going to be like when there’s 42 other cars on the track with you. Don’t forget that all of those 42 other drivers are going to have a hell of a lot more experience with this than you. Do you honestly think that we were just going to wait until February to throw you in a car and hope for the best?”

“No. I’m not an idiot. Clearly I’ll need some practice. I just never realized it was going to be quite so extensive. What exactly is my training going to entail?”

“Well, for starters, you’ll be joining the crew members with their daily workout. We also have a personal trainer that is going to be spending a few days with you a week focusing on a few other areas that they crew doesn’t. We have some computer programs we want you to work with to exercise your brain as well. I’ll be doing my best to give you as much information as I can to fill any knowledge gaps and there will be a few other activities in there. I’ll go over things more in depth tomorrow when I have your schedule ready.”

“Well then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” He worked his jaw like he wanted to say something, but turned and left Stiles’ office before he could.

“I need you here at 8:30 tomorrow morning,” he shouted at Derek’s retreating back.

*****

Derek appeared in his office at 8:35 the next morning. Stiles was too tired to care. He nursed his cup of coffee while he motioned for Derek to sit down. He finished replying to the last of his e-mails with a tired sigh, before giving his attention to Derek.

“Okay,” he started, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. “We’re going to start off with a tour and I’ll introduce you to the crew. Then we’ll go over your schedule. After lunch I’ve set up a meeting with the nutritionist you’ll be working with.”

“A nutritionist?”

“Yep. No arguing. Come on. We’ve got a lot to cover.”

He led Derek down the office hallway. Derek had seen most of that, and the office area wasn’t really important to him. The hallway led out to the main lobby where Erica’s desk was. He stopped at her desk, tapping his fingers impatiently across the front edge.

“Hey, so I almost forgot, Derek’s going to need an access badge. Can you work on that while I’m out giving him the tour?”

“Sure thing, boss.” She replied with a smirk.

“Stop calling me boss unless you’re actually going to act like I’m in charge.” 

“What would be the fun in that?” She laughed.

He gave her an exaggerated eye roll and led Derek across the lobby to another door marked ‘Employees Only.’ Stiles held his badge up to the small, black box next to the door until the light went from red to green. The door opened with an audible click, and he led Derek down a narrow staircase and through another door opening up into the brightly lit main floor of the team garage. 

They stood at the center of the main area which was a large open space that was mostly utilized for building new cars. Off to their right was a smaller garage area, which housed the majority of their tools and another area where the cars were cleaned and inspected after being unloaded from the hauler post-races. To the left was a hallway that led to a collection of smaller areas. There was a break room for the lower level, a team meeting room that was larger than the conference room upstairs, and a full gym. The end of the hall housed an area that had easy access to a space outside where the pit crew often practiced pit stops.

Stiles didn’t spend a lot of time talking about each area. They weren’t important to Derek at the moment and he’d have three months to get familiar with them and the crew. The last space Stiles led Derek to was they gym area. He had skipped over it while taking Derek out to see the pit stop practice area, just pointing out the door on the way past. This time they went inside.

The entire crew was already there, all dressed in workout gear, clearly ready for their morning team workout. Scott was at the head of the group, leading today’s workout. He stopped in the middle of his explanation of what today’s workout would consist of when Stiles slid through the door with Derek in tow.

“Hey, guys,” Stiles called. “I just wanted to formally introduce our new driver, Derek Hale. I’ve got some things to take care of with him today, but by Monday he’ll be joining you guys for your morning workouts. I just wanted to give him a little taste of what he had in store for himself next week. By all means continue, Scott.” He gave a complicated wave to Scott signaling for him to go on and to just ignore them.

He motioned for Derek to join him, leaning against the back wall near the door. They watched Scott lead the twenty or so team members in today’s workout.

“They’re doing some Crossfit stuff today. We try to mix it up to keep it interesting. Some of the guys who have experience with that kind of thing take turns leading the workouts. Occasionally we’ll bring an outside person to show us something new, but this is basically how you’ll be starting most of your mornings.”

They stayed in the gym for close to fifteen minutes, watching the team workout. It wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world though, and Stiles figured by now Derek got the point. He had other things to do with Derek. He quietly motioned for Derek to follow him out of the gym and back up to the main lobby of the building. Erica stopped him as he was about to pass by her desk.

“Hey, Stiles. Hold up a second.” She held up a while plastic rectangle.

“Awesome, you got it set up already?” Erica rolled her eyes at the question like it was beneath her to answer. She waved them off and turned back to her monitor.

Stiles held up the new badge to the box beside the door. The light turned green and he gave an excited squeal before slapping the badge against Derek’s chest as he held the door open.

“Don’t lose that,” he barked at Derek, leading him back down to his office.

“I’m not a child, Stiles,” Derek growled back.

Stiles hummed back, noncommittally. He ushered Derek back into his office grabbing the papers he had left on his printer and laying them down on the side of his desk facing Derek. 

“This is basically going to be your schedule until we get close to Daytona. Every morning starting at nine you’ll join the rest of the team downstairs for team workouts. About once a week you’re going to meet with a personal trainer in place of that. I’ll let you know when that gets set up. For now we’ll just stick with you working out here.”

“Two hours?”

“I didn’t think that would be a problem for you,” Stiles said eyes giving Derek a once over.

“Never said it was,” he replied with a smirk.

“Good. After that your schedule varies by day. On Mondays and Wednesdays you’re going to have simulation training.”

“Is that like driving simulations on a computer?”

“No. Not at all. I guess simulation isn’t quite the best word for it,” he chuckled. “It’s actually a series of computer programs that test your brain. The goal is for them to strengthen your mental skills and improve your focus.”

“So, I’ll be doing sudoku puzzles then,” Derek asked, squinting his eyes.

“Yeah, no. This is going to be a bit harder than the sudoku in the back of the paper, Derek. You’ll see soon enough on Monday. Let’s see, where was I? Oh yeah, so that’s Monday and Wednesday. On Tuesday afternoons we’ll be spending each afternoon going over a different track on the schedule. Every other driver will have raced at these tracks and you haven’t even seen them, so we’ll have to prepare you as best we can. You’ll notice that Thursday afternoons are blank. Activities for Thursday will be TBA.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s exactly what it sounds. You’ll find out the day of. There’s a few different things we’ll be doing so the times and places will change. Now Friday afternoon is also blank, but that is because you’ll have Friday afternoons off. Mostly because I don’t want to deal with you all week. I have other work that I have to get done.”

“Thanks,” Derek hissed, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“I’m sorry, are you complaining? I’m sure I can schedule for something if you feel like you’ll be bored. Oh, I could have you give the tours on Friday afternoons. Erica will love that. She hates giving the tours.”

“I think I’ll be fine with Fridays off,” Derek replied, looking murderous.

“Suit yourself then. Okay, that takes care of your schedule, and you have your badge already. Excellent. Your appointment with the nutritionist isn’t until 12:30 so we should have time plenty of time for lunch. You might as well pick. After your appointment your food options are going to be a bit more limited.”

To Stiles’ delight, Derek chose to eat at a diner in downtown Beacon Hills called the Howling Plate. Stiles never got to come here anymore because he was trying to keep his dad’s cholesterol down. If John didn’t get the french fries, then neither did Stiles. (He totally still did, but hey he was trying to be sneaky about it.)

Stiles and Derek both got cheeseburgers along with steaming plates of fries. The moan Stiles let out as he bit into his burger was nearly pornographic. Oh God, he had missed this. Derek shot him a judgemental look over his own burger.

“You know I’m the one that’s going on a diet after this, right. No one’s banning you from cheeseburgers, Stiles.”

“Ugh. You don’t understand, Derek. I’ve been trying to keep my dad from eating stuff like this for ages. He’s not young anymore and he needs to watch his cholesterol more. Sadly the only way to keep him away from the cheeseburgers is to stay off the cheeseburgers myself. I know what you’re thinking, so what? He doesn’t have to know. My father used to be the sheriff of this town. He has spies everywhere; he knows everything.” Stiles gave his fries a mournful look.

“You sounded like an adult for about half a second there when you started talking about cholesterol, but something happened and you’re right back at being a gigantic child,” Derek said.

“Oh, you wound me,” Stiles said dramatically, clutching at his heart. “Please. Just wait until after you start your diet. You will cry tears of happiness the next time you are allowed to eat a burger. Trust me.”

Derek didn’t talk much for the rest of their lunch, but that was fine. Stiles could talk more than enough for the both of them. When he had crammed as many fries as he could possibly fit into his stomach, he paid their bill and shooed Derek out of the diner and back to the car. The nutritionist they had an appointment with was in Sacramento and they had to drive half an hour to get there.

Derek didn’t talk in the car either. He just let out annoying huffs every time Stiles changed the song on his iPod. Halfway to Sacramento Derek ripped the iPod straight out of Stiles’ hands as he was trying to change the song again.

“Hey! What the hell?” He yelped.

“For Christ’s sake, how hard is it to pick one God damn song, Stiles? You listen to twenty seconds of every song and skip to the next. It’s driving me insane.” Derek glared angrily at Stiles’ iPod, like it was the one that had personally offended him. 

“Sorry,” Stiles said quietly. “I’m used to driving alone. I kind of forgot you were here, I guess.”

Derek didn’t reply. He was still scrolling through Stiles’ iPod, until he eventually punched the play button. The sound of rhythmic clapping came out of the speakers. Stiles recognized it immediately as Lose Your Soul by Dead Man’s Bones. Derek tossed the iPod into the center console and crossed his arms over his chest, choosing to stare out the window. Stiles watched him quietly out of the corner of his eye.

He managed to refrain from touching his iPod for most of the remaining drive. The only exception being when his iPod began playing Katy Perry’s Firework. Stiles stabbed the next button quickly with his thumb, cheeks turning red, as the song quickly changed to This is Gospel by Panic! at the Disco.

The building they stopped at was a small, brick structure near a strip mall. The waiting room was decorated in calming earth tones and expensive furniture. They even had new issues of magazines that people actually wanted to read. Not like when you go to the doctor’s office and end up paging through a three month old edition of Family Circle.

“You want me to come in with you?” Stiles asked Derek, who was paging through a copy of Entertainment Weekly next to him.

“I’m not a five year old. I think I can handle an appointment with a nutritionist by myself,” Derek huffed.

“Fine, fine,” Stiles said, raising his hand placatingly. “I’ll just wait here for you, then.” Derek rolled his eyes at him and continued perusing an article about Jennifer Lawrence while he waited.

Stiles waited nearly an hour for Derek to finish his appointment. He was starting to run out of interesting reading material, by the time Derek re-emerged. The man looked like someone had force fed him manure. He handed Stiles one of the two identical binders he was carrying.

“She gave me a second copy of my plan. You’re supposed to watch me to keep me on track or something.” Derek sounded like he was moments away from breaking something. Stiles wisely decided they better get back to the car, where breaking something wouldn’t get Stiles in trouble.

“It can’t be that bad,” Stiled said encouragingly. He flipped open the binder and started flipping through the pages. “Wait are you supposed to drink that…” He trailed off squinting at a smoothie recipe that looked absolutely terrifying.

“You’re not paying me enough for this,” Derek said hoarsely. He was staring out the windshield, clearly reconsidering all of his life choices. Stiles swallowed, realizing he was going to do something stupid. He was desperate to keep Derek on the team.

“Look. I’ll make you a deal. We do this together and I can be just as miserable right along side of you. I know that’s not much of a consolation, but it’s all I can give you. You seem like the kind of guy who would enjoy making other people miserable. So what do you say?”

“Fine.” he hissed through his front teeth.

*****

When Monday morning rolled around, Stiles made it in to work early for the first time in, well, probably ever. He was not so subtly hanging around Erica’s desk in the front lobby. He grinned like a mad man when he saw Derek push through the front door.

“Morning,” he called out far more cheerfully than he normally would have. “Did you enjoy your breakfast? Mine tasted a bit like cardboard, although I’m assuming that means I made it right.” Derek gave him an annoyed look before swiping his badge at the door leading downstairs. “See you at lunch!” Stiles called to the closing door.

“Don’t you have work to do or something?” Erica grumbled. She was trying to poke Stiles’ fingers off the edge of her desk with the end of her pen. 

“Probably,” he sighed. 

Instead of heading for the door that head to his office, however, he found himself swiping his card at the same door Derek has just disappeared through moments earlier. Stiles found Scott in the break room already dressed in baggy gym shorts and one of his older Stilinksi Racing t-shirts, filling up a water bottle from the sink.

“Hey, man,” Stiles greeted. “You leading the workout today?”

“Yup,” Scott replied with a cheery grin. “I planned an extra special one just for Derek.”

“Oh man, try to go easy on him. It’s his first day and we actually need _him_.” Stiles pleaded.

“Please,” Scott said flippantly. “You’d be lost without me. Besides, the guy’s already pretty ripped. I doubt he’s going to struggle that much with one workout.” Scott left Stiles in the breakroom, to get ready in the gym.

Stiles hung around the break room for a while longer, trying to look busy in case someone came in. He took down the chart on the wall that had been tracking Jackson’s finishes throughout the season. He made a mental note to make one for Derek. After digging through the cupboards for a bit and writing down on a napkin a short list of things that should probably be restocked soon, Stiles heard the sound of Scott’s voice carrying down the hallway.

He pocketed his napkin list, and went to stand just outside the door to the gym. The door had one long narrow rectangle of a window that went from the top of the door to just above the handle. Stiles stood at a slight angle so he could see farther back into the room. Derek was somewhere in the middle of the group clad in black basketball shorts and an old shirt that he had cut the sleeves and part of the sides off of. 

When he lifted his arms in the air, copying the stretch Scott was doing at the front of the room, Stiles got a good view of the side of his pectorals peeking out of the long hole down the side of his shirt. Yeah, Scott was probably right. With a body like that Derek probably wasn’t a stranger to a strenuous workout or two.

His thoughts were interrupted by a soft cough from behind him. Stiles whirled around, heart leaping into his throat, to see his father standing in the hallway behind him. His arms were crossed across his chest and he had an amused expression on his face.

“Stiles,” he drawled out slowly. “What are you doing down here?”

“I--uh.” Stiles spluttered. “Well, I came down to ask Scott about something, and then I thought since I was down here I would go through the break room cabinets and see what we needed. Erica mentioned she hasn’t had the chance to do it since she’s been so busy lately.”

“I see,” John replied. “That doesn’t really explain what you’re doing now, though, son.”

“Oh,” Stiles gasped. “Uh, well I just heard Scott start their session and I guess I just wanted to make sure Derek found everything all right.” He trailed off again, looking sheepishly at his dad.

“I think he can get on just fine without you, son. Now if you’re done down here I could use your help going the changes to the specs for the new cars next season.”

Stiles nodded dumbly and followed his father upstairs. On his way past Erica’s desk, he dropped off his napkin list for her, mumbling something about the break room downstairs. She gave him a sort of odd look, but he assumed she’d figure it out. 

After a frankly boring morning of poring over the changes in specs to the new cars, Stiles grabbed his lunch from his office and decided to bring it down to the larger break room downstairs. Most of the guys had already eaten and were working on a pair of cars situated on the main floor of the shop. Stiles could see his father having a chat with the team’s two main engineers, probably discussing what changes they would need to make to the cars.

The only people in the break room at the moment were Derek and Scott. Derek looked freshly showered and was now dressed in a pair of tight fitting jeans and a dark grey henley. Scott appeared to be rambling on about various work out routines, a topic which Derek seemed to have very little interest. Stiles sat down at their table, taking a chair next to Scott and across from Derek.

“Want to trade lunches?” He joked at Derek, offering up his plain, whole wheat bagel and a small container of almonds. Derek gave him a dark look. “Hmm, yeah, you’re right. My bagel looks much better than--whatever that is you’re eating.”

“It’s a salad,” Derek growled at him. Stiles fake shuddered. 

“Salad. My worst nightmare,” he sighed dramatically. Derek ignored him and went back to stabbing rather viciously at his spinach.

Stiles elected to spend the remaining of his lunch conversing with Scott, who unlike Derek, actually contributed to the conversation and could answer in more than just grunts, glares, and the occasional eyebrow twitch. When they had all finished, Scott left to go help with the pit stop practices, and Stiles dragged Derek back upstairs with him to the conference room.

Before lunch, Stiles had set up a spare laptop in the conference room, giving Derek a quiet place to work. He had the software already queued up and waiting for when they would be ready.

“All right, you’ll be in here the rest of the afternoon. I’ve already programmed what activities you’ll be working on for the day. Basically all you have to do is click start and follow all the directions the computer gives you. Feel free to take a break if you need to. It shouldn’t take you the rest of the day, but if you’re still in here by the time I leave, we can call it quits and you can pick up where you leave off on Wednesday. If you have any questions I should be next door in my office. Have fun.” He shut the door quietly behind him.

*****

As the week dragged on they fell into an easy routine. Stiles did his best to not creep on Derek anymore as he spent his mornings working out with the rest of the team. He ate lunch with Derek and Scott in the break room downstairs, trying to get more than two words out of Derek at a time. The afternoons were spent with Derek either in Stiles’ office or the conference room. When Thursday rolled around, things went as normal until after lunch.

“So what are we doing this afternoon?” Derek asked Stiles as they cleaned off the table they had been eating at.

“Team outing,” Stiles said with a smirk as he walked out the door. Derek followed him out with a quizzical look on his face. Before he could question Stiles, Stiles put two fingers in his mouth and let out a sharp whistle. “Alright everybody. Time to load up!”

Most of the crew members had been milling about, waiting for Stiles. The few that had actually been working on something, dropped their tools and joined the rest of the crew. There was a small stampede of feet up the stairway. Stiles grabbed a baffled looking Derek by the front of his shirt and gave a small tug.

“Come on, idiot. Time to go.” Stiles whined.

They piled into a group of vans that were parked in front of the lobby. Stiles pulled Derek into the last van that still had space. Scott and Isaac were already in the back trying valiantly to figure out which seatbelt buckled into where. Erica was locking the front door. She ended up climbing into the driver’s seat of the van they were seated in. Stiles groaned.

“You’re driving this one? Can I get out and switch?” He made a pitiful noise in the back of his throat.

“Too late,” she sang cheerily, pressing the door lock button with a manic grin. “You’re stuck with me now.” 

“Is someone going to tell me where the hell we’re going?” Derek interrupted. “Is this some sort of new driver team hazing or something?”

“Hazing?” Stiles said with a snort. “We’re not going to haze you, Derek; this isn’t college. This is like team bonding with a dash of training. Stop worrying. It’ll be fun.”

Derek soon found out they were headed to Sacramento. Erica followed the rest of the vans into a nearly empty parking lot. They all piled out, stretching their legs. Stiles laughed when he spotted Derek’s dumb look at the realization of where they were.

“Fun?” He asked Stiles. “This is part of my training? Is this a joke?”

“No, this isn’t a joke, and yes, fun. I’m aware that that’s probably a foreign concept to you.”

“Stiles, this is a go-kart track,” he said exasperatedly. 

“Yeah, thanks, Derek. I know what it is. This isn’t like the little go kart track your parents take you to when you’re five. These karts get pretty fast. fast enough to necessitate helmets. It may not be stock cars, but it’s surprisingly good practice. You know a lot of NASCAR drivers got started in kart racing when they were younger. In fact, a lot of them have actually done the same thing we’re doing, just probably not at this same track. Now hurry up, or we’re going to end up with the weird, smelly helmets.”

They entered the front doors of K1 Speed to come upon a lobby filled with various full-size models of race cars. Behind the cars were floor to ceiling windows, giving them a view of the track. Stiles joined Erica at the counter, where she was using their company credit card to pay for everybody. She had booked the whole place in advance so they didn’t have to worry about hogging the track when other people were around.

Stiles found Derek lingering near a wall of photos. They were all photos from the winner’s circle the go-kart track had set up. A lot of them he didn’t recognize, but there were a few that were faces he had seen from around the NASCAR circuit.

“Believe me now?” he asked, nudging Derek in the ribs.

“I can’t believe Denny Hamlin has done this.”

“Twice,” Stiles said pointing at a second photo farther down the wall. “Oh, and did you see Tony Stewart’s picture?” He asked pointing out another. “I told you this was a thing. Now can you pull this stick out of your ass so we can actually have some fun?”

“I don’t have a stick up my ass, Stiles,” Derek said stiffly.

“Yeah, you’re not being very convincing, buddy.” He replied with a dramatic eyebrow raise. “Now hurry up. Stinky helmets. Do not want. Come on,” he goaded.

Stiles dragged Derek back to where the rest of the crew was already rifling through an area near the track that shelved a large number of helmets. He immediately grabbed at one, sniffing at it suspiciously before testing it out on his head. It was a bit too large, so he moved farther down the row looking for once a bit more snug on his cranium. In the end he ended up with a helmet that for some reason smelled vaguely of cabbage. He never had any luck at getting one of the good helmets.

Everyone was crowding in front of one of the track employees who was loudly explaining the rules of the track along with how much time they’d get out on the track. He let them all out of the helmet area where everyone raced to get a go-kart either in a good starting spot, or with their favorite number. Stiles ended up near the back of the line of cars. He didn’t go for any car in particular, but he did follow Derek closely and snagged the car right next to his. 

He glanced over to his right to grin at Derek, forgetting that Derek couldn’t actually see his face with the helmet covering it. So he gave Derek a small sort of nod, which was the best he could do with the bulky helmet covering his face. If Derek even acknowledged him back, he had no way of knowing.

The employee standing on the outer edge of the wall waved the green flag he was holding, signaling the start of the race. Stiles whipped his head around to look out over his steering wheel instead of Derek. He punched the gas on his go-kart as soon as the one in front of him started to move away. The feeling was exhilarating. They may have only been electric go-karts, but the speeds they got up to was a little incredible.

Stiles wouldn’t admit to it, but he let off the gas more than most when navigating the tight corners. It made his stomach feel like it was going to jump up his throat. He didn’t pass many people. There were more that went flying recklessly by him. It was nearly impossible to tell who they were as they blurred by, but he was certain he saw a streak of gold hair flying by him halfway through.

He was one of the last few drivers to cross the finish line as an employee waved a checkered flag at them. It didn’t matter to Stiles, though. He was in it for fun. Another employee was lining Erica, Scott, and Derek up in the winner’s circle. The winner’s circle was merely a checkered backdrop behind a three tiered podium that was something more likely to be found in the olympics than in auto racing. 

Stiles returned his helmet to the shelf and jogged back to watch Erica’s victory dance. She was standing atop the podium in the first place position holding a small, gold, plastic steering wheel shaped trophy over her head. Scott stood to her left holding a silver version of the same trophy, while Derek was to her right on the lowest tier of the podium with a bronze version. Stiles clucked his tongue while he snapped a picture of the trio with his phone.

“You lost to Erica?” he said, with just a hint of a mocking tone.

“Oh, I’m sorry, where did you finish again Stiles?” Derek snapped back.

“It doesn’t matter,” Stiles shrugged. “I’m not the one being paid to be a good driver.”

“Don’t mind him,” Erica said, patting Derek’s shoulder. “He’s just jealous of our trophies. Now how good are you at pool, Hale? I’ve been trying to beat Stiles and Scott for ages.” Before she even waited for his reply, she was dragging him off the podium and towards the snack bar area where most of the crew had already migrated to.

Stiles and Scott followed behind them, fist-bumping over Scott’s trophy. The trophies were forgotten on a nearby table as Erica thrust pool cues into their hands. Derek still looked as confused as ever, like he was wondering how on earth had he agreed to all these things, but at the same time a little too afraid to say no to Erica. Stiles could relate to that look well.

“You want to break?” Erica asked Derek, looking up from where she was leaning over the table racking up the pool balls.

“Uh,” Derek mumbled.

“You do know how to play pool, right?” She glared at Derek, eyebrows raised.

“Yes?” Derek said, voice raising just a little making it sound like a question.

“Oh, whatever,” Erica sighed flipping her hair over her shoulder. “You can’t be any worse at this than Evans. I don’t know what I was thinking the day I asked that man to play.” Erica rolled the cue ball down the table towards Derek, who was looking helplessly at Stiles and Scott. 

“Don’t worry,’ Stiles grinned. “She’ll only be mad at you if you lose. On the bright side she might just stop talking to you. I still can’t figure out how to get her to stop talking to me.”

“Shut it, Stilinski,” Erica snapped as she crossed her arms and leaned back against the table behind her.

Derek leaned over the pool table, squinting down his pool cue. With a sharp forward motion he shot the cue ball down the table, crashing it into the neatly formed triangle of balls Erica had set up. Most of the balls scattered about the table, a few still remaining centered on the spot Erica had placed them. Derek frowned slightly when none of the balls found a home in any of the pockets. Erica let out a put upon sigh, expressing her disappointment in yet another pool partner who had failed her.

“My turn,” Stiles said with a smirk.

Erica may have had him easily beat when it came to the go-karts, but pool was totally his thing. Pool made sense. It was math, just angles and geometry. Math he could do. He could take his time, sighting out where each ball would go and not be rushed to make a move. Stiles easily lined up a shot, sinking the number ten ball into the corner pocket.

“Stripes,” he called out, high fiving Scott as he walked around the table, eyeing up his next shot. He easily sank another ball into one of the center pockets. He smiled at the glare Erica was giving him. Unable to line up another good shot, Stiles shot the cue ball at the remaining large group of balls, breaking them up a bit more, to hopefully give Scott something to shoot at when it was his turn.

Stiles silently raised his eyebrows at Erica, challenging her to do better, just to piss her off that much more. Erica made her first shot, but missed her second, tapping the cue ball just light enough to leave the ball she wanted to stop centimeters from the edge of the pocket. 

“Is she always this serious about pool?” Derek whispered, leaning in close to Stiles. Stiles chuckled.

“Erica’s not super serious about pool, she just hates that it’s the one thing I’m better at than her. She’s probably made everyone on the crew partner up with her at least once, but she has yet to form a team that can beat me and Scott here,” he replied, nudging Scott in the ribs with his elbow.

Derek actually didn’t seem to be that terrible at pool, but he seemed to falter occasionally under Erica’s glare. He made some pretty impressive shots, but as per usual Stiles and Scott triumphed. It was close, though. Derek and Erica only had one ball remaining on the table when Stiles shot the eight ball into the far corner pocket. Erica huffed and stormed off, trophy in hand, ignoring Stiles’ laughter.

“Better luck next time,” Stiles called out after her. Derek looked at Stiles with a thoughtful expression.

“You could have done better,” Derek said softly. “You let her get close, and then won.”

“It’s no fun unless she actually thinks she has a shot,” Stiles replied, cracking a grin.

“That’s just cruel,” Derek muttered, but Stiles could still see the corners of his mouth lifting ever so slightly.

“All right,” he started, picking up his pool cue, “how about a rematch, just you and me?” Scott had already wandered off to find Isaac at the snack, leaving Stiles and Derek alone at the pool table.

Just as Stiles had guessed Derek was much better when he was more relaxed without Erica breathing down his neck. Stiles still won, but the game was close again, but at least this time Stiles wasn’t missing shots on purpose. It was probably the most relaxed he had seen Derek all week. It was nice.

*****

The fall blurred by as they fell into a routine. Stiles looked forward to Thursday afternoons the most. Their team building activities weren’t always as exciting as the go-kart racing had been, but they were easily the highlight of every week. Derek was the most relaxed during those times. Sure he wasn’t a smiling ball of sunshine yet, but it was a far cry from his usual scowly face. Stiles might even go as far to call him and Derek friends now. Maybe not quite friends. Work acquaintances? Whatever, he was working on it.

*****

The whole team took two weeks off for Christmas and New Years. The week leading up to that was more laid back than usual, and it was more like everyone was just pretending to work while counting down the minutes until vacation. At the end of November Stiles had bothered everyone in the building about signing up for Secret Santa. It had taken him nearly two weeks to convince Derek to write his name on the list. He was pretty sure it only happened because Derek wanted him to shut up, but it was still a win as far as he was concerned.

John, as the only member of the team not participating, ended up being in charge of helping distribute names. In other words, he put everyone’s name in a bowl and glared disapprovingly at anyone who dared attempt to peek in the bowl. Stiles bit back a look of disappointment when he pulled Scott’s name from the bowl. Normally he would be thrilled. He knew Scott well enough that buying him a gift would be a breeze. He’d just kind of been hoping he’d draw Derek this time.

He ended up buying Scott a copy of Grand Theft Auto V because the man had been moaning over the fact that his girlfriend, Allison, had refused to buy it for him for weeks. Well, Stiles could deal with Allison being mad at him. At least Scott would be thrilled about it.

A week prior to the party, John pulled Stiles into his office. They had ordered a few promotional/merchandise items so they would have things to sell for the first few races if there was any interest. There were large stacks of photo cards with a short biography on the back for Derek to autograph, model cars sporting their paint scheme for the first race, and a pile of lanyards with Derek’s name and car number on them.

“What do you think?” John asked. “I mean obviously we can get better stuff once Derek’s had a few more races and perhaps we can pick up a few more sponsors.”

“It’s great,” Stiles grinned, picking up one of the model cars. “Does he know about the sponsor, yet?”

“No, I was going to let you handle that.” 

“Of course,” he sighed. “Can I steal one of these?” he asked, waving his hand at the open box of cars.

“Help yourself,” John shrugged. Stiles pulled a model car out of the open box on top of the stack, turning it over in his hands with a thoughtful expression.

“Thanks,” he muttered, as he left his father’s office.

That Friday Stiles corralled the crew on the main floor at a collection of tables surrounding the slightly crooked Christmas tree that had been erected in the corner. Earlier in the month he had decorated the aforementioned tree with a couple of strings of ancient Christmas lights and an odd assortment of car themed ornaments. Under the tree was a pile of presents that had been steadily growing all week long.

“Is everyone here?” Stiles called over the rumble of voices when his father joined him in front of the tree. “Okay then, my dad, here, is going to draw a name out of the bowl. The person he picks will give their gift to their secret santa first. Then that person will do the same and we keep going until everyone has a present before we all start opening things.”

The first name John called off was Danny, their jackman and mechanic. He pulled a rectangular package, wrapped in green and red striped paper from the back of the tree and handed it off to Kyle, their tire specialist. The procession continued on with Stiles eagerly eyeing each present wondering if it was going to end up in his hands. As the number of empty-handed people dwindled, Stiles began to wonder if his name somehow got left out. 

He was jarred from that thought when he realized Derek was standing in front of him holding a flat package, clumsily covered in wrapping paper sporting cartoon santas. Stiles accepted the gift with a stunned expression. A small cough from his father brought him back to reality and he hurried to pick Scott’s present out from the dwindling pile remaining. Scott gave him a knowing grin.

When everyone had a present in hand, Stiles wasted no time in ripping the paper off of his present. It looked like a book. He flipped it over to look at the cover. It wasn’t just any book, it was the new Hawkeye graphic novel that he’d been drooling over for ages, but could never seem to find in the local comic book shop. How the hell had Derek known? Before he even got the chance he was being wrapped in the tightest, most bone crushing hug of his life.

“Stiles! You got me Grand Theft Auto! Allison can’t even be mad at me because I didn’t buy it--it’s a gift! This is perfect. You are the best.” Stiles chuckled at his enthusiasm and wrapped his arms around Scott, returning the hug. 

“Yeah, buddy. Glad you like it.”

“What’d you get?” Scott asked, finally releasing Stiles from his embrace.

“That Hawkeye graphic novel I’ve been wanting,” Stiles replied, holding the book up for Scott to see. “And Derek had me. I can’t believe he actually found this. No, I can’t believe he actually knew what I wanted. I should go tell him thanks. I’m sure you’re dying to get home anyway to try your present out.”

Scott waved him off with a grin. Stiles found Derek standing awkwardly on the edge of the crowd holding a box and a balled up wad of wrapping paper.

“Thanks,” Stiles began. “I don’t even know how you knew I wanted this, but yeah, thanks for the book.”

“You spent almost an entire week talking about how Hawkeye and Black Widow were the most under-appreciated of the Avengers and how they deserved their own movie. Scott may have dropped a few helpful hints as well,” he added guiltily.

“Well, they can’t just leave us hanging on that whole Budapest thing. Come on!” he cried. “So what did you get?” Stiles craned his neck just a little to try and see what was in Derek’s box.

“Uh. Tony had me. I got some new driving gloves,” he said, tilting the box downward to let Stiles see. 

“Cool,” Stiles proclaimed, instantly feeling foolish. “I, uh, actually have something for you up in my office. There’s something I should talk to you about anyways.”

“Okay,” Derek answered looking slightly suspicious. They slipped away from the party to Stiles’ dark office. Stiles handed Derek the small box that had been stashed away in his bottom drawer all week. Derek stared blankly back at Stiles.

“Open it,” he urged. Derek gently tore the paper off and used a fingernail to slice open the tape holding the flaps down. He pulled out the model car, holding it up to the light to examine it properly.

“It’s--uh, that’s going to be your first car. The one for Daytona. That’s what it will look like.” He scratched the back of his neck, looking for something to do with his hands.

“Is that my sponsor?” Derek asked, squinting at the hood of the car.

“Kind of,” Stiles stammered. “Full Throttle signed a five race contract, so if they don’t like you after the first five races then we’ll need to find a new sponsor.”

“Oh,” was all Derek said, still staring down at the car in his hands.

“When we get back from the break we’ll need to go over some of the contract details. There’s just a few requirements that you have to do at every race. Not a big deal.”

“Requirements? Like what?”

“Mostly just stuff for interviews and what not. Like you have to be drinking a can of Full Throttle after every race if there’s people taking pictures or filming. You’ll probably have to wear some stuff with their logo or whatever, but as long as you’re not on camera then you don’t have to worry.”

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” Derek grumbled.

“Sure you do. You can drink a couple of crappy energy drinks on TV or you can go back to driving modifieds at the crappy Beacon Hills dirt track. It’s not exactly easy to get sponsorships for a driver no one has ever heard of, you know. Racing isn’t exactly the cheapest of sports. On the other hand you could always fork over the $50,000 they’re paying us for the first five races.” Stiles crossed his arms over his chest.

“Yeah, I know. I just do whatever you tell me to,” he said with a sigh.

“That’s right,” Stiles replied, smacking him on the back. “Now I’m telling you to enjoy your two weeks off. Try and not to get too fat while you’re gone.”

Derek rolled his eyes, but Stiles didn’t miss the barely there smile that crossed Derek’s face for mere moments. It didn’t last long before he and his leather jacket were disappearing out of Stiles’ office door.

“I’ll see you in two weeks, Stiles.” Derek called down the hallway as he left.


	5. Chapter 5

As January came to a close and the first race of the season inched closer, Derek became a ball of nerves. Stiles didn’t think it was possible, considering he’d rarely seen much more than bored annoyance radiating off from the man. After Stiles snapped his fingers in front of Derek’s face for what must have been the fourth time in half an hour, he gave up on all pretense of continuing his lesson with Derek.

“Dude,” he snapped. “We’re leaving for Florida in a week. Pull yourself together.”

“I’m sorry.” Derek muttered, nervously poking at a hole in his jeans.

“Okay look, I know you’re nervous, but freaking out isn’t helping any. You’re going to do fine. I know you will.” Derek continued to stare resolutely down at his knees, fingernail scraping at the rough denim. Stiles huffed. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked quietly.

“Not really,” Derek said in a hoarse whisper.

“Derek,” Stiles said softly. “Whatever this is you can talk to me about it.” Derek shook his head fiercely and bolted out of the chair. The chair wobbled back and forth dangerously before clattering to the ground. Stiles sighed and scrubbed his hands across his face, pulling at his hair until it stood out at awkward angles.

He stormed out of his office, ignoring Erica’s shouts after him. Stiles wove through the cars in their small parking lot until he found Derek’s black camaro at the far end. He ripped open the passenger side door and threw himself down in the leather seat, slamming the door shut behind him. Stiles didn’t say a word. He crossed his arms and stared straight ahead through the windshield.

“Stiles, get out of my car,” Derek said tiredly.

“Nope.”

“Stiles,” he pleaded.

“Derek, I’m your crew chief. I have to work more closely with you than anyone. If you can’t tell me what’s up, then this isn’t going to work.”

“I’m scared,” he whispered.

“Duh. I know you are, but it’s more than just normal nerves over your first race. There’s more to this, and I just want to understand. I’m trying to help you, Derek.”

“Fine; you’re right. I’m not just scared because it will be my first race,” Derek admitted.

“Okay, then can you tell me what it is? Please, Derek,” Stiles pleaded.

“It’s about my parents.”

“You’re parents? You’ve never really talked about them.”

“They’re dead,” Derek stated bluntly.

“Derek, I’m--”

“Sorry?” He interrupted. “Yeah, I’m really sick of hearing that, but thanks.”

“I don’t understand ,though; what do their deaths have to do with whatever is going on in your head right now.”

“It was my fault.” Derek’s voice sounded strained and he was gripping the steering wheel like it could keep him from floating away. Stiles gently laid a hand on Derek’s arm, stroking across his bicep with his thumb.

“I don’t believe that.”

“I had two sisters, growing up. My dad had raced when he was younger, and as his only son I guess he expected me to carry on his legacy or something. I never even really wanted to race. He put me in a sports mod the moment I turned 14. I was terrified, but I was even more scared of disappointing him.

I wasn’t that great, but he was always pushing me to do better. I hated racing for the longest time. My older sister, Laura, was the one who had always loved racing. She should have been the one in that car, not me. My dad, though, he just wouldn’t listen no matter how hard she begged. I don’t think it had anything to do with her being a girl, or anything. Laura was always his little girl, and he probably had a hard time accepting the fact that she was growing up. He’d never have admitted it, but I’m pretty sure Laura was his favorite child.

So, one day I was at the track practicing. All the other drivers had already left and my dad had let Laura take me to the track that day. She was 18 at the time and he at least trusted her enough to drive the truck with the trailer attached. We were all alone and she was begging me to let her take my car out on the track. I knew my dad would kill me if he found out, but Laura was good at getting what she wanted.

Jesus, it was so stupid. She didn’t even have a fire suit; I just gave her my helmet and strapped her in. I told her to take it slow, but she tried to get up to full speed anyway. She hit the wall pretty hard. Apparently there had been a problem with my harness too. It broke when she hit the wall. She ended up breaking her leg and a bunch of ribs. 

My dad was furious when he got to the hospital. I thought he was going to beat the shit out of me right there in the hospital waiting room. He might have if my mother and my other sister, Cora, hadn’t been right there. I felt so guilty, I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I just left, I couldn’t stand being in the same room as him. 

I stayed out all night, just driving around because I was too much of a chicken to go home and face my dad alone. When I finally got the guts to go home, my parents weren’t there. My uncle Peter was sitting at the kitchen table, just waiting for me. He said there had been an accident. There was a semi that lost control. It swerved into the other lane and hit them head on.”

Derek paused, taking a shaky breath. His eyes were rimmed in red and Stiles could tell he was holding back tears. He kept his hand on Derek’s bicep, trying in vain to soothe him in some small way.

“Derek--”

“The last thing my dad said was ‘it should have been you.’ He was right. It should have been me in the hospital. I never even got to tell him I was sorry.”

“What about your sister, Laura?” Derek gave him a small shrug.

“I couldn’t really face her after what happened. She was eighteen so she was going to college soon, anyway. My uncle became my legal guardian and I lived with him in Sacramento for the next two years. I think Laura eventually gave up on trying to talk to me. I don’t know how she could even look at me.”

“Are you saying she blames you?”

“I’m saying she should,” Derek spat from between his teeth.

“So if you hated it so much, why’d you keep racing?”

“It was what my dad had wanted. I screwed everything up as a kid. I guess I thought maybe if I could live up to his name, maybe it would, I don’t know, be what he wanted. I know he’s dead, but I just wish I could make it better. God, that’s so stupid. My father’s been dead for years and I’m still fucking terrified that I’m going to disappoint him.”

“So that’s what this is about? You’re scared you’re going to disappoint your father? Derek I’ve seen you race. I know I never knew your dad, but if all he wanted was for you to succeed at racing, then I don’t see how he could be disappointed in you.”

“I could.” Derek snorted, sounding disgusted.

“Derek. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just a kid. You could never have known all that was going to happen. I know it probably doesn’t matter to you what I think, but you’re a great driver Derek. You’re going to do great at Daytona and it doesn’t matter what your dad told you when you were a kid.” They sat in silence a moment longer.

“Stiles, can you just give me a minute. Alone?”

“Sure thing, buddy.” Stiles gave him one last comforting pat on the thigh before letting himself out of the camaro.

It took Derek longer than a minute for Derek to find his way back to Stiles’ office, but Stiles didn’t push the matter. He acted like their previous conversation in the parking lot had never happened. They continued to go over the schedule for their next week at Daytona.

Derek left that day leaving Stiles a confused mess. He wanted to help Derek, but he couldn’t really do that and keep Derek’s secret. Then again, maybe Derek wouldn’t be quite so pissed at him if he actually helped Derek. His fingers twitched indecisively over his keyboard. They began to tap away, as if of their own accord. How could he resist a few good Google searches?

The first article Stiles pulled up was a detailed report on the Hale’s car accident. He only made it halfway through the article before he had to close the tab on his browser, stomach twisting uncomfortably. When he calmed himself down a little, he opened a new tab to the Google home page again. This time he searched for Laura Hale.

He sifted through various news articles, looking for someone that fit what little he knew about Derek’s sister. For the most part all he really knew was that she was two years older than Derek, meaning she’d be around thirty by now. Stiles was about to give up, when he came across a short article about a Laura Hale, a photographer living in a small city just outside of Sacramento. Her age was listed as twenty-six in the article, but it was a few years old, so it seemed to fit.

*****

Saturday came and Stiles found himself driving an hour and a half to Rancho Cordova, following directions written on the back of a wrinkled Taco Bell receipt. He found Laura’s photography studio in a row of small shops, just off the main road. Even though it was a Saturday the hours on the sign hanging in the door stated they were open until noon. The article he’d found didn’t have an actual picture of Laura so he had no idea what she would even look like.

The bell hanging above the door jingled merrily as he opened it, revealing a tall woman with dark brown hair, smooth as silk, framing her face. She smiled politely at him, and Stiles realized that her eyes were shockingly familiar. 

“Can I help you?” She asked, as Stiles slowly approached the counter she stood behind.

“Um, maybe? I’m looking for Laura Hale.” There was an edge of uncertainty to his voice. He wanted this to be Derek’s sister, at the same time he was terrified of it being Derek’s sister. What was he possibly going to say to her?

“I’m Laura Hale,” she answered, sounding curious. “So can I help you then?”

“Well, that depends, is Derek Hale your brother?” The polite smile immediately vanished from her face, replaced by something much more fierce.

“How do you know that?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

“He told me about you--sort of.”

“Is he okay? Is there something wrong with him? Where is he?” She demanded.

“No,” Laura’s face paled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Stiles stuttered realizing the conclusion she’d come to. Physically, yes, he’s okay, but emotionally not so much. I just want to help him, but I don’t know if he’ll let me. I was hoping that maybe you could talk to him.”

“I don’t think he’d want that,” Laura answered lowering her head. 

“Why would you say that?”

“After our parents and sister died, he kept avoiding me. Not like just trying to not be in the same room as me or something. He took it to the extreme. He memorized my schedule and would make sure that when I was home, he wasn’t. When I changed my routine and tried to approach him, he got really agitated. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye. There would be some lame excuse about needing to be somewhere else and he’d vanish. Peter told me to just give him time, that he’d come around eventually, but nothing ever seemed to change. So I guess I just gave up. I moved away so he could have a normal life without being constantly afraid of seeing me.”

When Laura finished talking, Stiles could tell her eyes looked glassy. She was on the verge of tears, valiantly biting her lip to keep it from trembling.

"I know he spent a lot of time avoiding you, but if you could just talk to him. Tell him it's not his fault. Maybe then--"

"Not his fault?" Laura hissed. “Of course it’s not his fault! I was the one who convinced him to let me drive his car. I was the one who screwed up and crashed. I was the reason our parents had to come to the hospital in the first place. It’s my fault. Why do you think he hates me?”

“Hates you? Laura he doesn’t hate you. He blames himself,” Stiles told her gently.

“He blames himself?” She asked timidly. “Are you sure? I always assumed he was avoiding me because he hated me for what I did.”

“No, Laura. He avoided you because he felt guilty. He told me that he was afraid to face you because he thought you blamed him for what happened. I think he said something along the lines of ‘I don’t know how she could look at me after.’ Laura, I think you should talk to him.”

“I can’t believe this.” She pressed her palms into her eyes. “I wasted all this time running away from him because I thought that’s what he wanted. God, my brother always was such an idiot.” Tears ran freely down Laura’s cheeks.

The bell over the door jingled again. A young, blond woman walked through the door leading a toddler by the hand. Laura hastily wiped the tears from her eyes and straightened her sweater, brushing imaginary dust off. Stiles slipped one of his business cards out from his wallet and slid it across the counter.

“I should go,” he half-whispered, not even sure why he felt the need to speak so quietly. “You should call me, though. I think we have more to talk about.”

Laura slipped the card into her pocket and plastered on a fake smile for the customer waiting behind Stiles. He sidestepped the woman and child, looking at Laura over his shoulder as he pushed out the door. He really hoped she would call him.

The call from Laura didn’t come until the next day. Stiles wouldn’t admit it, but he let out a sigh of relief when he heard her voice on the other end. He had been relentlessly checking his phone every few minutes since he had left her studio the previous day. Derek needed something to get through to him or he was going to blow everything before the season even started.

“Is this Stiles?” The voice questioned, sounding slightly tinny through his phone’s crappy speakers.

“Laura?” He asked.

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back yesterday. I had some stuff on my mind.”

“I understand.”

“So I noticed that your business card says you’re the co-owner of Stilinski Racing. How exactly do you know my brother, Stiles?”

“I guess I’m sort of his boss,” he sighed. “Our team had some issues with signing a driver for the 2014 season. We ended up letting some local drivers test drive some cars and, well, now Derek will be driving for us this season.”

“You’re telling me my little brother is going to be in NASCAR?” she breathed.

“Yeah. I mean we’re a small team and it’s only in the Nationwide Series, but yeah you’re little brother is now a NASCAR driver.”

“Wow. I mean sometimes I drove up to see him race, even if I couldn’t actually see him, but I never thought he’d end up in NASCAR. Our father would have been so proud.”

“Yeah, well maybe you should tell him that,” Stiles muttered into his phone. “He’s been freaking out on me all week about his first race because apparently having a giant guilt complex is a Hale family trait and he’s worried about disappointing your father from beyond the grave.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Laura raged. “Our father was always proud of him. How could he think that?”

“Laura he also blames himself for their deaths, when it was clearly an accident that _neither_ of you could have predicted or prevented.” Stiles put heavy emphasis on the neither part of that statement.

“Yeah, I know,” she lamented.

“I’m begging you, Laura. Please come talk to him. He needs this,” Stiles pleaded.

“I don’t know, Stiles,” she said slowly. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea. I’m still not sure he actually wants to see me.”

“I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I promise you, if you just explain to him what you told me he will want to see you. You and Peter are the only family he has left, and I somehow get the feeling that talking to Peter isn’t going to do shit for Derek right now. Look if you change your mind please call me. We’re leaving for Daytona on Thursday so I’m running out of time. If you haven’t made a decision by then, well I’ll have pit passes waiting for you at every race until you do.”

“I know you think you’re doing the right thing, Stiles, but I just don’t want to do this if I think it will make him worse. I’ve done enough to screw up Derek’s life already. I’ll call you if I change my mind.”

The line went dead and Stiles tossed his phone down with a dejected sigh. Well, it had been worth a shot. He’d just have to do as much as he could for Derek on his own.


	6. Chapter 6

Stiles and Derek flew out to Florida on a Wednesday. Speedweeks didn’t officially start until that Saturday, but NASCAR liked to have all the drivers out there early so they could get a chance to shoot promotional material for all three series and get pictures of all the drivers. The rest of the crew would be leaving on Thursday to drive the hauler across the country.

They took a small plane from the airport at Sacramento down to LAX, where they would be taking a larger, longer flight to Orlando, and then another flight between Orlando and Daytona. Stiles hated airports. They were full of noisy unattended children, tourists who didn’t know how to read signs, and worst of all the obnoxious kind of person who took up half a row of seats in the terminal for their bags, leaving Stiles wearily leaning against a pillar.

Derek was always a man a few words, but he wasn’t mute. At the very least he would communicate with Stiles via a series of caveman style grunts when he wasn’t feeling particularly chatty. Today, however, Stiles couldn’t remember Derek saying a single word to him. Strange. He should have threatened to strangle him at least five times now for the amount of rambling Stiles had been doing.

“Earth to Derek,” Stiles called waving his hand in front of Derek’s face. “Dude, didn’t you hear them? Come on, our first flight is boarding.” Derek stared unblinkingly down at the boarding pass clutched in his fist. Stiles huffed impatiently. “Hurry up, asshole. I don’t want to have to check my carry-on again. They always lose my bags. Which is just ridiculous when it’s plane-side check. How can they even get that mixed up?” He shook his head and grabbed Derek by the arm, pulling him forward to where an airline employee was scanning boarding passes.

They dropped down into their seats, which were thankfully not in front of the child Stiles had been eyeing warily in the terminal. He looked like a kicker. Nothing was worse than a kid who couldn’t keep his legs to himself, even if their first flight was only half an hour. Stiles fidgeted around in his seat impatiently, trying to get comfortable and wondering exactly how long it could take them to board a plane this tiny.

“Will you just sit still?” Derek snarled at him.

“Dude, what crawled up your ass and died today?” He asked irritably.

“I just don’t like flying,” Derek hissed before pressing his lips together in a grimace.

“Yeah, no one likes flying, Derek. Nobody is excited to spend their day getting patted down by TSA and sitting on a plane full of the most annoying people on the planet. That doesn’t mean you have to be an asshole about it.

“I’m sorry,” he snapped without any heat in it.

“Wait,” Stiles started. “You’re scared of flying, aren’t you?”

“No,” Derek denied, but he sounded too much like a petulant child to be convincing.

“Oh my God, you’re totally afraid of flying. That’s why you’ve been even weirder than usual today.”

“I’m not afraid of flying,” Derek sulked. “I’ve never even flown before. I just don’t like heights very much,” he admitted.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be the one sitting by the window then,” Stiles pointed out. He moved to stand so they could switch, but apparently they had finished boarding the plane and the stewardess was just beginning her preflight speech. “Uh, well we can at least close this, then.” Stiles leaned across Derek and slid down the shade on the window.

Derek looked pale, maybe even a little greenish as the plane engines started and they began to taxi out to the runway. He shut his eyes tightly and gripped the armrests so hard, Stiles was sure they were going to leave permanent indents. When the plane paused at the end of the runway, Stiles looked at Derek with a mixture of pity and amusement. This would be funnier if he didn’t feel bad about Derek actually being terrified.

A small noise escaped past Derek’s tightly closed mouth as the plane began to gather speed. Stiles pried Derek’s hand from the armrest in between them, intertwining his fingers with Derek’s. He gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

“Just try not to think about it, okay?” He whispered. “If it helps pretend like you’re somewhere else.”

Derek cracked one eye open just a fraction when the plane reached it’s highest altitude. He immediately squeezed it shut again as the plane shuddered through some turbulence. Stiles belatedly realized he had been rubbing gentle circles into Derek’s hand with his thumb. No need to be making this anymore awkward than it actually was. He focused on keeping his hand completely still within Derek’s for the rest of the flight.

Thankfully, the flight to LAX was short. It had only been about twenty awkward minutes of silence before the stewardess announced that they would be making their descent. As the plane’s nose dipped, Derek’s body tensed up and he crushed Stiles’ hand a little harder. Stiles bit his lip as they bounced down the runway and Derek tried to crush every bone in his hand.

“You can let go now,” Stiles squeaked once the plane stopped moving. The tips of Derek’s ears turned pink as he slowly extricated his fingers from Stiles’ own. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, not meeting Stiles’ eyes.

“It’s cool, dude.” Stiles let Derek have a moment as they waited to be let off the plane. 

He checked the row of screens as soon as they were off the flight, looking for their flight to Orlando. It didn’t take them long to find their next terminal, but they still had about an hour to wait until they could board again. At least this time the terminal wasn’t packed so they could actually sit down. Derek was still suspiciously quiet as he took the seat next to Stiles.

“Uh, thanks for that,” Derek mumbled, still not looking up from his hands.

“Like I said, it’s cool, dude.”

“Not really. I spent twenty minutes holding your hand like a little kid.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t going to say anything, you know. Everybody’s scared of something. If it makes you feel better, the next time we run into a horde of giant spiders you can let me hold your hand.”

“Giant spiders, huh?” Derek let out a tiny snort.

“Hey, the spiders in the Harry Potter movies gave me some serious nightmares, okay? Ron was totally right to be freaked out by them. Did you see their pincers?” he asked, wiggling his pointer fingers in front of his mouth. “Absolutely terrifying.”

“You’re absolutely ridiculous,” Derek retorted.

“Absolutely not,” Stiles said with a grin, nudging Derek in the ribs with his elbow. “Although, the next flight is about five hours, so we’re going to have to figure something out. I like my fingers the way they are and I don’t think they can make it that long without any blood.”

As they boarded their second flight, Stiles took one look at their boarding passes, snatched Derek’s away and shoved his own back into Derek’s hand. Stiles took Derek’s seat next to the window, leaving Derek with the middle seat. The middle aged business man who sat in the aisle seat politely ignored them as Stiles tried to keep Derek distracted.

Derek’s hand involuntarily found his as the plane began to move. Stiles gave it a reassuring squeeze as they approached the runway. Derek didn’t squeeze quite as hard this time. At least now that they had switched seats he was holding on to Stiles’ left hand, the one he cared significantly less about being crushed. When they reached cruising altitude, Stiles tried to wiggle his hand experimentally, but Derek didn’t loosen his hold.

“So you know how Scott and I have know each other since we were little right?” Stiles began. Derek gave him a slight nod, still staring empty eyed, and straight ahead. 

“Okay, so around the same time my mom died, Scott’s parents got divorced and his dad moved away. So we were both struggling, I guess, to deal with losing one of our parents in our own ways. When I was a kid my mom was always the one who took me shopping before school started for new clothes and whatever else. Scott’s mom, Melissa, had been taking extra shifts at the hospital after his dad had left. My dad, clearly underestimating how difficult shopping with two pre-pubescent boys would be, volunteered to take both of us to the mall one day.

“It was the first time Scott and I had really been out of our houses for the summer. Our parents had been taking turns watching us, and I mostly referred to it as my summer of misery. We both struggled to adjust. Anyway we were both pretty excited to get out. We were always miserable and we were always at home, so you know, you start to associate being sad with being at home, especially when you can’t help but notice that someone is missing. 

“Basically we behaved like your average child terrors in public. I guess I was always a bit of a handful as a child, but when Scott and I were together it was literally double the trouble. We were nightmares. By the end of the day my dad just wanted to get us out of there before we were never allowed back again. 

“Now while he had been paying at the last store we had been to, Scott and I decided to start running around, playing tag outside the store. When my dad came out of the store he yelled at us a bit and Scott and I both started running after him. I apparently got distracted along the way and stopped following them. My dad just assumed I was there just behind him with Scott and kept going.

“A few seconds later this security guard must have noticed what was happening. So this dude sees me wandering around, and my dad walking off so he just grabs me and holds me up. I started crying because I thought I was being kidnapped and I freaked out. The security guard, as he’s holding me, just screams ‘Hey, I’ve got your kid!’ Now when I was little my dad used to be a deputy. So he doesn’t even notice that the guy is wearing a uniform, he sees a stranger holding his terrified kid up. He came to the same conclusion as me, and thought I was getting kidnapped.”

By this point in the story, Derek had finally taken some notice of Stiles. He had turned to watch Stiles talk and his hand had begun to loosen it’s death grip. Stiles took the opportunity to wiggle his hand out of Derek’s grasp, now having both hands free to gesture wildly as he continued his story.

“What kind of kidnapper announces the fact that he’s stealing your child?” Derek snorts.

“Exactly!” Stiled exclaimed. “That’s why it was so ridiculous. My dad clearly wasn’t thinking straight, so he comes barreling at this dude, screaming bloody murder. He rips me out of the guy’s hands, sets me down behind him, and just tackles this poor guy to the ground. My dad’s going off about how he’s a cop and he’s going to have this guy arrested. It took him almost fifteen minutes to realize the guy was actually a security guard, not a kidnapping neanderthal. 

“Needless to say, after that whole scene Melissa was the one to take us both shopping from then on out. My dad was pretty embarrassed when he had to explain himself to his fellow officers when someone called the incident in. I haven’t been able to look a security officer in the eye, since.” Derek laughed.

“You couldn’t look another security guard in the eye? Stiles, it’s not like there’s any chance of that happening again.”

“Whatever. Not the point. Now it’s your turn.”

“My turn?” Derek asked looking confused. “My turn for what?”

“I told you an embarrassing story from my childhood, now it’s your turn to do the same.”

“I didn’t agree to that.”

“Well, fine then, I’ll just be keeping my hands to myself for the rest of the flight. I hope we don’t have a bumpy landing.” Stiles crossed his arms across his chest with a haughty look.

Derek gave a nonchalant little shrug, pretending like he could care less. The feigned indifference, however, failed to meet his eyes. Stiles slowly raised the window shade and stared out at the passing clouds. Derek shifted nervously in his seat. Another silent minute passed before Derek sighed in defeat.

“Fine,” he said snippily. “I’ll tell you a damn story.” Stiles shut the window blind with a prompt snap, and turned back to Derek with a silly grin. He laced his fingers together, resting his elbows on the arm rest, and his chin on his hands.

“Go on,” Stiles drawled with an evil smile. Derek rolled his eyes, but started his story nonetheless.

“Fine. When I was a kid I was kind of gullible. My sister Laura loved to make stuff up only for me to find out it wasn’t real. I made myself look like an idiot more than once because I was dumb enough to believe Laura. Now, as a kid, I was really into wolves for a while.

“Every summer, my parents took us all camping for a week. One year when I was about six, she was telling me stories by the campfire. She was telling me about kids who ran off in the wilderness and ended up being raised by wolves. I don’t remember exactly how she said it to me, but basically she implied that I would fit in better with a pack of wolves than with the rest of my family.

“At that point I was a little upset and so I told her that she was right. I would be better off with the wolves. After all wolves were a lot nicer than Laura. So I decided that since I was already in the woods, I might as well leave while we were there to look for a wolf pack to take me in. I went out in the woods and found a big stick and a little blanket. I got a flashlight and some beef jerky and a few other things and I tied it all up into the blanket and to the end of the stick.”

“Like a little hobo?” Stiles dissolved into fits of giggles, imagining a tiny, scowly, Derek dressed up like a little hobo. “That’s kind of adorable.”

“Shut up. I was six. I thought that was how it worked. My parents thought it was pretty adorable too when I told them I was running away to go live with the wolves. They probably assumed I’d make it two feet down the trail and change my mind. So they were all playing along, telling me they’d miss me, but they understood and blah, blah, blah. 

“I was a little more determined than I had let on. I walked around the campground for almost half an hour and got completely lost. When I couldn’t find my way back to the trail I started to get a little scared. Then I heard what was probably coyotes howling. I didn’t know back then that there aren’t wolves in California, so I had assumed it was the wolves coming to take me away.

“I started crying. I realized I didn’t really want to go live with the wolves. I wanted to sleep in a bed, and I wanted my mom to tuck me in at night. The problem was, I had no idea how to get back. I was young enough to believe that I was actually never going to see my parents again. 

“As it turns out, my mom had told my dad to follow me to make sure I didn’t actually wander too far off or get hurt. She was actually kind of pissed at him for letting me go on for so long. He let me cry for about a minute before he came out from behind the tree he was hiding behind. He picked me up and carried me all the way back to the campsite. Laura pouted the rest of the night because my mom wouldn’t let her have any s’mores as a punishment for convincing me to run away.”

Derek looked down at his hands as he finished his story, clearly feeling rather embarrassed at telling Stiles about it. Stiles shrugged and launched into another childhood story. Talking seemed to be the only thing that could keep Derek sufficiently distracted. Derek suggested a few cocktails when the stewardesses began making their rounds, but Stiles vetoed that idea when he reminded Derek of everything they had to get done after they landed. He didn’t have time to deal with an inebriated Derek today.

Stiles was running out of stories to tell, which considering his childhood was pretty impressive, by the time the plane began its descent. Derek automatically began to tense up, clenching his fists. Stiles immediately offered up his hand without comment. It was apparently storming over Orlando as they approached, making the landing rougher than their previous flight. Derek didn’t even release Stiles’ hand until nearly half the plane had already disembarked.

“You okay there, big guy?” Stiles asked as Derek finally opened his eyes. Stiles was slowly massaging the life back into his left hand as he watched passengers file by down the aisle. Derek nodded mutely. “All right, well we have to get moving. We’ve only got about twenty minutes to catch our flight out to Daytona.”

They both grabbed their bags from the overhead compartment, hurrying off the plane to find directions to the next terminal. Derek jiggled his leg nervously as he stared at the wind and rain beating against the window at their final terminal. Stiles kept huffing every time the kid behind him ricocheted against the back of his legs. Apparently they needn’t have hurried so much from their previous flight. The flight to Daytona was delayed due to weather.

When they finally did board the plane, Stiles realized that he wasn’t actually sitting next to Derek. They were on a smaller plane that had a single row of seats down the left side and a double row down the right. When he had booked their flights he had no idea that Derek was scared of heights. Not to mention that the flight was booked solid, so he didn’t have a lot of options when it came to choosing the seats.

Stiles gave Derek a helpless look as he took his seat directly behind Derek’s. He mouthed ‘sorry’ at him before Derek turned and sat down. Stiles felt even worse when the captain came over the intercom before take off, explaining that due to the slightly stormy weather their flight might get a little bumpy. It might have been his imagination, but he swore after the intercom went off he heard a strange creaky cracking noise from ahead of him. He could only imagine the grip Derek had on his seat.

The captain hadn’t been lying about the turbulence. Though it was only a short flight, it felt like they were in the air for an eternity. The weather near Daytona was just as bad. Stiles was pretty sure the entire had flight had consisted of constant jostling that left even him feeling queasy. If he thought the flight had been bad, the landing was a literal nightmare.

First it started with them circling the airport when the pilot announced that they were having some technical issues with the landing gear. When they actually started their descent the wind started to get even worse, buffeting their plane back and forth, before they touched down. The wheels jumped against the pavement and skidded a little bit as the pilot fought to keep them on the runway. 

Stiles let out a huge breath as they taxied to their terminal. That was easily his least favorite flight ever. He let the other passengers get off while he waited in his seat. When the seats behind him had cleared out, he got up on shaky legs, like a baby deer learning to stand for the first time. Stiles leaned over Derek’s seat, trying to put on a smile.

“You all right, buckaroo?” He tried, making an effort to make it come out light hearted. Derek looked like he might throw up at any moment. There was a muscle twitching in his tightly clenched jaw and his hands were still trembling. “I’m gonna go ahead and take back what I said about not getting drunk today. It’s looking more and more like a brilliant idea. Now, let’s just get you off of this plane.”

Stiles reached down with shaky hands and flicked the seatbelt open from Derek’s waist. He grabbed Derek’s arm and tugged at it, hoping he got the message that Stiles wanted him to stand up. Derek didn’t seem like he was all there right now. Luckily, Derek stood on his own, blindly following Stiles’ prodding. Stiles yanked Derek’s bag down from the open overhead compartment, draping the strap over Derek’s shoulder, before prodding him gently in the back towards the open door.

Derek came back to himself a little more by the time they had made it to their hotel. Stiles checked them in and shoved a key card into Derek’s hand before dragging him off to the elevator. When Stiles jammed his own key card into the slot above the door handle, Derek jerked out of whatever day dream state he’d been in.

“Where’s my room?” he asked in a rough voice.

“This is your room,” Stiles replied, kicking the door open.

“Why do you have a key to my room?” Derek questioned, falling silent when the door swung open to reveal two double beds. “Wait, are we sharing a room?”

“Duh. What do you want? A fucking gold star? Of course we’re sharing a room. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my dad and I don’t exactly make a lot of money. So unless you start winning lots of races and making us lots of money, we’ll be sharing a freaking hotel room.”

Stiles tossed his bags on the bed next to the window before flopping down on the empty side and shoving his face into the pillows. Derek huffed, neatly placing his bags on the chair next to his bed. Stiles rolled over after a moment, so he could look at Derek.

“All right. I’m ready. Let’s go find a bar. I need a drink.”


	7. Chapter 7

Derek finished out the second practice session of that week at the bottom of the board again. The worst part was that Stiles knew Derek could do so much better. He had seen Derek drive better on his worse days. The only difference now, was that Derek was surrounded by other NASCAR drivers instead of the drivers he had grown up around. 

People were starting to talk and it wasn’t in the way Stiles had been hoping for. To be honest he had been day dreaming that they would come to Daytona and Derek would impress a bunch of people, maybe they could get some attention from sponsors or turn the heads of some other teams. He just wanted to prove to people that Stilinski Racing could be successful. After Jackson had driven for them last season, people had actually started to talk about them. They way Derek was driving they were going to get laughed out of the sport.

Derek didn’t talk to Stiles when he got done with his practice laps. He stormed straight from the garage to where their hauler was parked, ignoring Stiles’ calls as he ran after Derek. Stiles watched Derek shamelessly strip out of his fire suit in the back of the hauler, before yanking on a pair of jeans and a v-neck t-shirt. He tried to leave, but Stiles was standing in front of the door.

“Derek, stop!” Stiles shouted at him. “We’re not fucking done. You’re not leaving until we talk.”

“Fine, we’ll talk,” Derek spat back. “I’m sorry you fucked up and picked such a shitty driver, but I don’t think I can do this. Maybe you should get someone else.”

“Someone else?” Stiles screeched, sounding nearly hysterical. “Someone else! I spent three months trying to prepare you for this shit. You think I can just get someone else? You think I want someone else? I didn’t pick a shitty driver, Derek. I did my research, and I’m fucking good at research, Derek. I picked you, and whatever shit that you’ve been doing for the past two days is not you. I know damned well that you can drive better than that.”

“This is different,” Derek said, crossing his arms.

“Different? How is this different? You’ve done shit like this a thousand times. Why is this suddenly too much?”

“Because now everyone’s watching!” Derek shouted.

“There have always been people watching, Derek.”

“Not like this,” he said tightly. “This is a hundred times more people up in the stands. This is on TV, there’s a million people out there laughing at me right now, because I can’t fucking do this.”

Derek didn’t even let Stiles reply this time. He just shoved Stiles out of the way and slammed the side door of the hauler shut behind him. Stiles let out a shaky breath and slid down the wall of the hauler until he was sitting down. They’d fought plenty over the past three months, but the screaming at each other was new.

Stiles sat in the empty hauler for a long time. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, absently flipping it around between his fingertips. Finally giving in, he unlocked the screen and brought up his contact list. He scrolled through until he reached the number he wanted and hit dial. His fingers tapped a nervous rhythm out on his thigh as he listened to the phone ring endlessly. Just as he was pulling the phone away from his ear to end the call, ready to give up, a voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Hello?” Stiles quickly replied, snapping the phone back up to his ear. “Laura? It’s Stiles.”

“Stiles, I was actually about to call you soon. I’m here.”

“You’re here? What do you mean you’re here?” He asked, suspicion sneaking into his tone.

“Well, I’m in Florida. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said about Derek. I saw the results of his first practice session yesterday. It was awful.”

“I know,” Stiles said tiredly. “Today was even worse. We just yelled at each other a bunch and I think he wants to quit. He won’t listen to me, Laura. I know he can do this, but he won’t trust me when I tell him so.”

“Look, I’m at the airport now. I just need to pick up my rental then I can meet you somewhere to talk. Where are you staying?”

“Our team is staying at the Quality Inn near the track. Derek and I are in room 204.”

“Great, I’ll meet you there in half an hour. Then we can figure out how to fix my brother.”

Half an hour later found Stiles pacing his hotel room. He couldn’t decide whether it was a good or bad thing that Derek wasn’t here when he got back. At least his bags were still in the room, so Stiles knew he would probably be back that night. The second he heard the knock, he flew to the door, yanking it open so quickly a gust of air made his hair fly.

“Laura!” he breathed out. 

“Stiles,” she replied, pushing past him into the room. “So where’s Derek?”

“Don’t know,” he said with a shrug, shutting the door. “He ran off after practice and wouldn’t talk to me.”

“So what? Are we just going to sit here and wait until he comes back?” Laura bounced impatiently on Stiles’ bed.

“Well, I could try texting him, but I’m not sure he’ll answer me. In fact, if our conversation today is any indication, he’s definitely planning on ignoring me for as long as humanly possible.”

“No, he probably won’t. Do you have a computer?”

“Uh. My laptop is locked up in the pit box, but I have my tablet in my bag. Will that work?”

“Probably. Hand it here.”

Laura hopped off the bed, moving instead to sit at the small round table near the window. Stiles rummaged around in his duffel, finally pulling out a black tablet and an attachable keyboard. The second he handed it over, Laura got to work, tapping away furiously. 

“What are you doing?” Stiles asked suspiciously, taking the seat across from her.

“Finding my brother, what do you think?” She snapped.

“Are we using illegal methods to find him?”

“Depends on how you define illegal,” she said matter of factly. Stiles groaned into his hands.

“Just don’t let my dad find out. He may not be a cop anymore, but he’d still kill me.”

“There,” she said, flipping the tablet around to face Stiles. There was a map up with a blinking red dot.

“He’s at the beach?”

“Either that or he left his phone there. What are you waiting for?” she asked, picking up her keys. “I’ve spent far too much time as it is avoiding my brother.”

Stiles scrambled to grab his hoodie from the bed and raced out the door after Laura.

“So what changed your mind?” Stiles asked as they got into Laura’s rental car.

“I was thinking about it a lot after you came to see me. I was still scared that talking to him was going to make it worse. I still wanted to know if he was going to be any good, so I watched the practice times online. I couldn’t believe he did that awful. I think that’s what convinced me the most that you were telling me the truth about how messed up he’s been. I also stumbled across an article about all the rookie of the year candidates for this season. They were basically just laughing at Derek, like he didn’t have a shot because nobody knew who he was. I hated that.”

“What are you going to tell him?” 

“I don’t know,” she answered, looking lost. “I just miss him. He’s the only family I have left and I guess I don’t want to miss the chance to have my brother back if what you told me is really true.”

“Trust me, it is. He misses you too, Laura.”

When they got to the beach the sun was hanging low in the sky, tinting the clouds spectacular shades of red and orange. Stiles checked the map on his tablet one last time, seeing how far down Derek was from where they were parked. As it was the middle of February, the beach was fairly empty. With his hoodie Stiles was warm enough, but he could feel a cool wind coming from the ocean, turning his cheeks pink.

He spotted a lone figure in the sand, knees tucked up under his chin with arms wrapped around his legs. Laura slowed so she was walking a few paces behind Stiles as they approached Derek. Stiles sat down in the sand next to Derek, mirror his pose. He leaned over and bumped his shoulder gently against Derek’s.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“How’d you find me?” Derek asked quietly.

“I had a little help. I brought someone with me.” He paused, waiting for something to say. “I know I’m technically your boss and everything, but I’d still like to think that we’re friends. Maybe? I don’t know. I do care about you, Derek, so could you try not running away this time. It’s important.” Stiles stood up, brushing sand from his jeans. He motioned for Laura to take his place.

Laura hesitantly stepped forward, curling her legs underneath her body. Derek turned like he had something to say, but when his eyes fell on Laura nothing came out of his half open mouth. If Derek had looked scared on their flights, this was a whole new level.

“Hey, Der,” Laura whispered. Derek mouthed silently for a moment, looking like a fish out of water.

“What are you doing here?” He finally croaked out. Derek glanced back over his shoulder to give Stiles a strange look. Stiles shot back with a small smile and a tiny shrug. 

“I need to talk to you, Der.”

“Why now?” Laura ignored the question.

“I’m sorry that you thought it was your fault, Derek. You should have never thought that. You kept running away from me. I thought you blamed me for the accident.” She paused to wipe at her eyes with her sleeve. “I thought you hated me,” she whispered. Derek shook his head slowly.

“It was my fault, though. I wasn’t supposed to let you drive the car. When I got to the hospital, Dad--he told me it should have been me, not you. If you hadn’t been in the car, the belt would have broken when I was driving. I should have been the one who got hurt. He was so mad at me, Laura. That was the last thing he said to me and I never got to tell him I was sorry.” Derek rested his face against his knees, squeezing himself into a ball.

“It wasn’t either of our faults, Derek. It was a stupid accident, and I ended up in the hospital. Either of us can be blamed for that, but neither of us could have known that a semi driver was going to fall asleep at the exact moment that our parents would be driving home from the hospital. You’re the only one left, Derek. I miss you.” 

“I missed you, too,” he said into his knees. Laura wrapped her arms around him and squeezed, pressing her face into his shoulder. Her hand rubbed soothing circles into his back as he shook. Stiles took another few steps back, feeling out of place. When Derek stilled, Laura beckoned for him to come sit with them. So he sat to Derek’s right this time, purposefully looking out at the ocean instead of at Derek’s red-rimmed eyes.

“So Stiles told me you’ve been having some trouble lately. Do you want to talk about it?” Laura asked. Derek frowned, glancing out of the corners of his eyes at Stiles.

“Why?” He asked, drawing the word out.

“Derek, this isn’t just about you doing a shitty job driving. I said it before and I’ll say it again. I care about you. Not just because you’re my employee and I want you to make us lots of money, but because I like you Derek. I want to help you.” Stiles nudged him again with his shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring way.

“Stiles told me that you feel like you’re going to disappoint Dad. Is that what this is about, Derek?” 

“I could never do good enough for him. I never even wanted to race when I was a kid, but he wanted me to so badly. I tried so hard, but he always kept pushing me to do more. Everyone keeps expecting me to do something amazing, but I don’t know how. I’m just going to disappoint them like I did with Dad.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, Der. Dad was always proud of you. He never shut up about you. I kind of hated you for a little while when we were younger because I was jealous. I think that’s why I tried so hard to know everything about racing. You and Dad always got to spend so much time together. I guess I thought if I wanted to race too, maybe he’d start paying attention to me.”

“Are you kidding me?” Derek choked out. “He spent most of our time together shouting at me for whatever I did wrong in the car that day. Were you really jealous of that? I was always jealous of you. He did nothing but yell at me, but you, you were his perfect little angel who could do no wrong.” Laura snorted.

“You guys are both idiots,” Stiles interrupted. 

“Hey!” Laura squawked, reaching over Derek to punch Stiles in the shoulder.

“Your dad loved you guys, that’s just how parents are okay? My dad and I went through some pretty rough times after my mom died. People say awful things when they’re upset. I know for a while I was convinced my dad didn’t love me anymore, but that’s not true. Sometimes people are just bad at showing how much they care.”

“He’s right, Derek. Maybe you never really noticed it as a kid, but Dad was proud of you. I know he wouldn’t be disappointed in you today. He wouldn’t be disappointed in you even if you finish in last place on Saturday. He’d just be proud that you made it here.”

“I know you’re worried about disappointing people. You think everyone expects you to do great things, and that’s true. I do expect a lot from you. But I expect a lot out of you because I’ve seen what you can do, Derek. I know you have it in you. I expect great things, because I’ve already seen great things from you, Derek. I think you just have to stop believing all those people who think you can’t do it. They don’t know you, I do.”

"Come on," Laura sighed, tugging on her brother's arm. "I've been on a plane all day and I'm starving. Let's go get some dinner."

*****

Laura showed up at their hotel room bright and early the next morning. When Stiles first heard the incessant knocking on their door, he assumed Derek had forgotten his room key again when he went to breakfast. He squinted groggily at Laura. 

"You're not D'rek," he slurred, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Well, good morning to you to," Laura said as she brushed past him.

"Where's Derek?" Stiles asked around a yawn.

“I’m guessing he’s in the shower,” Laura replied, nodding her head towards the closed bathroom door. “You’re really not a morning person, are you?” Laura chuckled.

“Mmph.” Stiles mumbled, sprawling back on his bed, smushing his face back into his pillow. Laura rolled her eyes and perched at the end of Derek’s bed. 

Derek snorted in his direction when he got out of the shower. Derek poked him in the shoulder with one finger, making Stiles wiggle further into his blankets.

“We’re going out for breakfast. Do you want anything?”

“Nnggph,” Stiles mumbled into his pillow.

“So I’m guessing that’s a no. I’ll see you at the track later then. Did you get Laura a pit pass?” 

Stiles flopped his arm in the direction of the bedside table, still keeping his face buried in his pillow. Derek leafed through the papers that had collected there, pulling out the laminated pass Stiles had left there. Derek and Laura left, leaving Stiles alone to sink back into peaceful slumber.

He woke half an hour later to the grating beeping of the alarm he set on his phone. Stiles slapped his arm out, smacking at the alarm on the table. The longer it beeped the closer he got to realizing it wasn’t the alarm that was going off. With a groan he shoved his arms under his pillows grasping around until he managed to pull out his cell phone. He squinted at the screen, tapping the dismiss button. He had enough time for a quick shower and to grab a bagel from the complimentary breakfast before heading out.

Unsurprisingly Stiles was the last to show up to the track. The pit box was already set up and Derek was introducing Laura to most of the crew. He rolled his eyes as Isaac blushed bright red, when Laura winked at him.

Derek looked better today than he had in weeks. This was the last practice session they had before qualifying, so Stiles was really hoping Laura was the key to Derek driving better. His dad pointedly looked at his watch when Stiles climbed up into the pit box. Stiles waved him off. He wasn’t that late.

“Hey, Derek, go get your suit on already!” Stiles shouted down from atop the box. “You can come sit with me, Laura.”

“Oh, I get the special treatment, huh?”

“Special? Please. I’m just trying to keep you out of the way,” Stiles mocked.

He showed Laura what he was doing on his laptop while they waited for Derek to get out on the track. When Derek got in line for his practice laps, Stiles motioned for Laura to be silent as he slipped his headset on. Derek’s first few laps were still pretty shaky. Stiles called him into the pits to make some adjustments to the car, based on Derek’s feedback.

“All right, Derek,” he said into his headset. “You’ve got twenty more laps after this stop. Make the most of them.” 

When Derek had gotten all he could out of his practice laps, Stiles called him back to the garage. 

“Sorry, today’s kind of boring. We don’t actually have a lot to do for the rest of the week. The cup cars kind of take over the track for the rest of the week between the duels and the shootout and all that. Man, I can’t wait to the day we break into the cup series. They get the afternoon practices,” he moaned dreamily. 

“Whatever. I’ve got my brother back. I’m at Daytona. I’m pretty okay with whatever boring is.” Laura shrugged. 

“Well, speaking of your brother, lets go fetch him from the garage. We’ve got some business to attend to.”

Derek was having an in-depth conversation with Isaac under the hood when Stiles and Laura found him in the garage. 

“So how’d I do?” Derek asked with a hint of nervousness.

“Well, there’s still some guys out there running laps, but here’s the times as of your last lap.” Stiles flipped his tablet around for Derek to look at.

“Fifteenth? Are you sure this is right?” Derek frowned down at the tablet.

“Yes, it’s right you idiot,” Stiles said snatching his tablet back. “Stop pretending that you suck, we both know that’s not true. Now come on, we’re supposed to meet with our sponsors this afternoon.” Derek was still staring at him stupidly. He sighed. “Oh, and good job, I guess.” He gave Derek a small smile.

They met with their one and only sponsor at the back of their hauler. Derek was presented with a stacked case of energy drinks, that he looked squintily at. The representative reiterated the contract details and what both Derek and the whole team needed to do anytime they were on camera. The guy looked unimpressed with Derek, so Stiles made sure to reassure him that they were merely working out a few kinks on the car. Derek would be ready to go come Saturday.

When they were alone, Stiles ripped open the top case of Full Throttle. He dug out a can and tossed it to Derek.

“I figure you should carry a can with you while you’re around the track just in case. Otherwise you really only have to drink it if you’re being interviewed after a race or something. I mean if people willingly drink it, it can’t be that bad, right?” He gave Derek a hopeful expression.

Derek cracked open the can and took a small sip. He scrunched his face up as he swallowed.

“I really don’t like you,” he muttered.

“Oh come on, don’t be such a sourwolf.” Stiles snarked, snatching the can from Derek’s hand.

“Sourwolf?” Derek choked.

“Yeah. Sourwolf. You keep making that stupid sour face, and you apparently wanted to be a wolf. Sourwolf. It totally fits.” He took a swig of the energy drink, swallowed, and looked curiously down at the can. He took another one before holding the can up and tilting his head to the side to try and read the ingredients. “Hmmm. It tastes kind of like sour patch kids, but in liquid form. I kind of like it.” He took another large swallow.

“You’re disgusting,” Derek declared. “And the last thing you need is to be drinking an energy drink. You’re going to be up all night, aren’t you?”

“Probably,” Stiles giggled. 

Derek left him there with a disgusted look on his face, even though Stiles could tell that he wasn’t actually mad at him.

“Don’t be late for dinner!” Stiles yelled. “Team dinners are mandatory!”

*****

The week flew by. Once they had finished practices, they had next to nothing to do other than to watch the Sprint Cup events. Stiles gave his tickets to the duels and the shootout to Laura. As much as he would have liked to spend that time with Derek, he knew Laura wanted it more and Derek needed that even more. It wasn’t like he’d never seen a race at Daytona before. By this point in his career the novelty was gone.

He basically locked himself in his hotel room over the next three days. The TV was on in the background on mute, on the Speed channel where the duels were airing. His laptop and tablet along with a messy stack of printouts were spread out all over his bed. He spent the time going over different strategies that they might need to employ depending on how the race was going to play out.

Stiles’ biggest concern was the lack of allies they would have on the track. They were a one car team, so Derek wouldn’t have a teammate to draft with. Not to mention the fact that he was not only a rookie, but a rookie that nobody had ever heard of. They’d be avoiding Derek like the plague out on the track. Stiles hoped he wouldn’t have to stoop to asking Jackson for help. He didn’t know if he could take that kind of humiliation.

Stiles deemed Friday, the day before the race, Stiles and Derek time. He really just made Derek stay in the hotel with him while he grilled Derek about what to do when certain situations came up. 

“So what do you do if you get lapped?” Stiles asked, pacing the room, holding his notebook up in front of his face.

“I don’t know, Stiles,” Derek sighed from his bed.

“Derek, we went over this a thousand times! Have you even been paying attention?” Stiles screeched. “The race is tomorrow, you know. We have to be prepared for everything!”

“No Stiles, you have to be prepared for everything.” Derek got up off the bed and grabbed Stiles by the shoulders, halting him. “You realize it’s pointless for me to memorize all this stuff, right? You’re going to be there on the radio telling me what to do anyway.”

“I just want you to be prepared,” Stiles whined.

“I am prepared, Stiles,” Derek said calmly. “But unless you want me to fall asleep while I’m driving the car tomorrow, I’m going to need you to shut up so I can go to bed. Okay?” He released Stiles’ shoulders.

“Fine,” Stiles sighed, falling back onto his own bed, where forgotten papers crunched beneath his body.

Derek brushed his teeth and turned the lights out while Stiles still tapped away on his tablet in the dark. He couldn’t remember exactly what time he fell asleep, but it wasn’t long after that his phone was buzzing, squished down somewhere near his lower back. He dug it out from the tangle of sheets and got dressed quietly in the dark, slipping out of the room to grab a few doughnuts from downstairs.

He snagged one of Derek’s cans of Full Throttle from their mini fridge and settled in at the table to give his notes one last once over. When Derek got up he gave Stiles one judging look before stepping in the bathroom to shower, shaking his head as he shut the bathroom door.

“Did you even sleep last night?” Derek asked while rubbing absently at his hair with a towel.

“Some,” Stiles replied, unsuccessfully trying to hide the yawn that escaped his mouth.

“Yeah, okay. Did you eat breakfast yet?”

“I had some doughnuts,” Stiles mumbled wearily.

“I don’t know how you’re an adult sometimes.” Derek told him. “I’m going to quick eat something before I head over. I guess I’ll see you over at the hauler then.”

Stiles began to pack his things up as soon as Derek left the room. He was actually the first one from his team to the track. A rarity that spoke of just how nervous he was for today. He unlocked their hauler, checking that everything looked in it’s place. The crew trickled in one by one and as soon as they were all gathered around the end of the hauler Stiles directed Scott to lead them in a short series of stretches to get them all a little bit warmed up for the day.

Since the Cup events took up most of the week, the Nationwide series had their qualifying session in the morning, just before their race in the afternoon. He helped set up the pit box, getting all of his equipment ready to go. Laura showed up just before qualifying was about to start. His dad would be manning the top of the pit box with him today, so he showed Laura where she could stand where she wouldn’t get in the way of the pit crew, giving her a reassuring smile, before turning his attention back to the track.

Derek was assigned to the second group going out to qualify. Stiles settled his head set on, making sure Derek could hear him okay.

“Okay, dude, this is going to be a lot like practice. Try not to worry too much about what the cars around you are doing. Just try to run the best lap you can and we’ll work with what we get. It’s Daytona, so starting farther back isn’t going to be the end of the world.”

Derek ended up qualifying in twenty second place, which was pretty much dead center of the field. It wasn’t spectacular, but it was a hell of a lot better than the lap times he had been turning out during his first two practice sessions, so Stiles would take it. They had a short break where the crew had time to make a few last minutes adjustments to the car and Derek had time to get some water and a protein bar. 

The stands were slowly filling up and Stiles noticed Derek nervously rubbing his palms on his fire suit more than once. Stiles patted him on the back.

“Dude, don’t worry. Most of them are here to see other people. They won’t even be paying attention to to you.”

“Thanks,” Derek said dryly. “That’s a real confidence booster.”

“No problem, now get going. You’ve got driver introductions soon.” Stiles waved Derek off.

Driver introductions dragged on, and Stiles got more impatient to start the damn race already. Derek kept elbowing him as they lined up next to the car for the national anthem. Stiles was all twitchy and itching to be done with all the pre-race nonsense already so he could get back up into his pit box where he belonged.

The next half hour felt like an eternity, but Stiles sighed with relief when the race marshall finally called out for the drivers to start their engines. The pace car led them out on the track where they fell into their starting positions, lazily circling the track to warm up their tires for a couple of laps. 

“Ready?” Stiles asked through his headset, just before the pace car pulled off the track.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Derek replied.

“Just try to stay in line. We don’t need you wrecking the car at the start of the race.”

Derek did manage to stay in line for the first few laps, but it was clear that he was struggling to find someone to draft with. Just as Stiles had feared, the more experienced drivers weren’t very willing to help Derek out, not trusting him enough not to screw up. He fell quickly to the rear end of the lead pack, barely managing to keep up. 

Things got even worse after their second pit stop. One of the tire changers didn’t get the lugnuts on tight enough so the officials made them come back over the wall after they had completed their stop to tighten the lugnuts, costing them seconds they didn’t have to spare. By the time Derek got his car back out on the track the lead car had already passed them by putting Derek a lap down. 

Stiles tugged at his hair in frustration, instructing Derek to do his best not to lose any more positions. Thankfully, another car spun out, slamming into the outside wall only ten laps later, bringing out the caution. Derek got the lucky dog and lined up at the tail end of the line of cars on the lead lap. By some miracle Derek managed to partner up with another rookie, Ryan Reed. They weren’t the fastest cars on the track, but they managed to keep drafting together long enough to get them close to the top ten.

Derek lost another few spots as the last round of pitstops separated him and Reed. Stiles was actually starting to think this race wasn’t going to be the giant disaster he had been anticipating it to be. Derek might actually get a halfway decent finish. No sooner had those thoughts crossed his mind, when everything fell to pieces.

The one thing everyone feared at Daytona was ‘the big one.’ Generally near the end of the race, as drivers grew more desperate and raced just a tad more recklessly in hopes of a better finish, someone slipped up and caused an accident. With cars packed so tightly together at Daytona, what normally would have only affected a few cars at any other track, tended to take out large portions of the racing field here.

It was like someone had pressed a button slowing everything around him down. Stiles clearly saw a car ahead of Derek wobble, losing control through the corner and turning up into the car outside of him. The wreck was nearly impossible to avoid, and Derek was just too close.

“Low, low, low,” Stiles chanted through the radio, hoping that Derek could get under the spinning cars. It was no use. One of the cars ricocheted off the outside wall speeding straight down into the right side of Derek’s car. Derek spun off wildly through the grass behind the front stretch of the track, his tires ripping up the grass in brown streaks as he left his mark on the logos painted there. Derek was fighting to control the car, but he didn’t listen to the words Stiles was trying to yell through the radio. He jerked the wheel too hard, causing the already out of control car to roll. It rolled over three times before shuddering to a halt right side up.

“Derek!” Stiles yelled over the radio. “Derek can you hear me?” Nothing but static returned. “Derek. Derek!”

“I’m okay,” Derek finally managed to reply. “I’m not hurt, Stiles.”

“Good, that’s good. Can you lower your window net and get out of the car so the officials know that, too?”

Stiles looked up at the track to see the net on the battered side of Derek’s car fall down as a pair of arms reached up to grip the edge of the roof. Derek pulled himself up and out of the car, slowly removing his helmet and dumping it back into the window of the car. The ambulance wasn’t far behind and Derek willingly climbed into the back.

“Stay here,” he muttered to Laura as he climbed off the pit box.

“Wait, Stiles where are you going? Let me come with you!” She grabbed his arm, stopping him mid stride.

“Just follow the crew back to the garage. I’m going to go meet Derek at the infield care center. He’s fine Laura. He got out of the car on his own. He’ll be okay, I promise.”

It was easy to tell Laura he’d be okay, even though Stiles wasn’t so sure he believed himself. Sure he’d seen hundreds of wrecks, a lot of them even worse, where drivers walked away without a scratch. Then again he’d also seen plenty that didn’t look so bad that sent people to the hospital. It took a lot for him not to sprint all the way to the care center. He took a deep breath and kept himself to a brisk walk, keeping his face a mask.

The ambulance had already dropped Derek off at the care center, in the time it had taken him to walk there. He had to shove his way through the growing crowd of reporters waiting for drivers to be released so they could grill them. Derek was in one of the first rooms off the main hallway already in the process of being checked over by one of the track doctors. Stiles stood in the doorway letting him finish.

“Everything looks okay, Mr. Hale. You have a mild concussion, but as long as you take it easy the next couple of days, it should be fine. If the pain gets worse or if you experience any unusual side effects like blackouts or vomiting, see a doctor immediately.” 

Stiles put a reassuring hand on Derek’s shoulder, gripping it tightly, as soon as the doctor left them alone. “You sure you’re all right?”

“No,” Derek breathed out, whitening knuckles gripping the edge of the exam bed. 

“Hey, you’re fine,” Stiles insisted, grabbing Derek’s other shoulder and giving him a gentle shake. “You heard the doctor. Mild concussion, nothing to worry about. Just take a minute to pull yourself together before we go talk to the reporters.”

“Reporters? What reporters?”

“The crowd of reporters outside the door waiting to hear all about what it’s like to roll a car at two hundred miles an hour.”

“Oh,” Derek coughed, rubbing his hands together with a small frown.

“Ah, and don’t forget this,”Stiles said. He wrestled a can of full throttle out of the pocket of his pants, shoving it into Derek’s hands.

“Really?” He sighed. “I have to drink that now?”

“You’re going to be on camera,” Stiles squeaked out. “It’s in your contract,” he insisted.

“I hate you,” Derek murmured.

“Well, so you are feeling better then. Excellent. Lets go get this over with now then, shall we?” Stiles proposed. He offered up a hand to help pull Derek to his feet, and prodded him towards the doorway.

The second the doors opened, it felt like a hundred people began talking at once. He tried to stand near Derek, but he was getting jostled on all sides by reporters eager to talk. Derek cracked open his energy drink, taking a long drink just so he could have time to think. He did his best to calmly answer all the questions directed his way, which was difficult considering he didn’t have a lot of information to share.

It was ridiculous how many questions the reporters asked considering he barely saw much of the accident from his position and they had already gotten to see the video replays, whereas Derek of course hadn’t had the chance to see any videos yet. He mostly kept repeating that he didn’t know who caused the accident and that he didn’t get to see the replays yet. Stiles rolled his eyes. He hated reporters. 

Just as he was about to tell the reporters to back off so Derek could leave, the doors of the care center opened again, releasing Kyle Busch. All the reporters immediately flocked to the more popular driver, allowing Stiles to grab Derek by the arm and drag him away while they had the chance.

Stiles snagged the half empty can of Full Throttle from Derek’s loose grip, letting out a satisfied noise as he took a drink. His lack of sleep was really starting to catch up to him. Thank god this awful weekend was almost over. 

Laura practically threw herself on Derek, the moment they entered the garage. Squeezing Derek until he was red in the face.

“Laura,” he wheezed. “I’m okay. Jesus, let go. You’re going to break my ribs.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” She stammered, releasing her vice-like hold on his torso. “It just looked terrifying and it kind of reminded me of--well, you know.”

“I’m fine, Laura. I swear,” Derek told her in a reassuring tone. Stiles wasn’t so sure, but he was going to worry about that later.

There wasn’t much point of them being at the track any longer since their car was mangled beyond belief. They left it to the crew to load everything up. There wasn’t much of a hurry. They wouldn’t be leaving until tomorrow. The hauler would leave for California tonight, but the crew would all be flying back after the Cup race the following day. 

Stiles decided to take Laura and Derek out to an early dinner while the restaurants wouldn’t be crowded with fans from the race. The last thing Derek needed was fingers pointing at him and people asking him even more questions about the accident today. Laura at least seemed to have regained some of her previous cheerfulness. 

They were at some grill near the beach that was half empty at the early hour, eating burgers. Derek seemed to have lost interest in his dinner about halfway through, something which Stiles took great advantage of. This place had the best french fries and they were not to be wasted. Stiles pilfered another fry from Derek’s plate, winking at Laura.

“Stop eating all my fries,” Derek complained swatting at Stiles hand a moment too late.

“They’re getting cold,” Stiles whined. “You’re not even eating them.”

“He’s got a point,” Laura grinned. “If you’re not going to eat them, someone should, Der.” She snatched a couple of fries out from under Derek’s nose with a gleeful smile.

“You’re both ridiculous, and I regret that you ever met.” Derek grumbled. 

“You never could lie,” Laura chuckled. 

Despite Derek’s weak attempts of protest, Stiles and Laura polished off most of his remaining fries. Stiles drove Laura back to her hotel where she hugged Derek goodbye. Her flight would be leaving early Sunday morning. Though Derek had a pretty busy schedule she made him promise to come see her whenever he had time off, and, in turn, she promised to come to any other races that she could.

Derek then proceeded to sulk around their hotel room for the remainder of the night. He didn’t even protest when Stiles turned on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. It wasn’t even as good without Derek’s scathing commentary.

“Come on, man,” Stiles whined, tossing one of his pillows at Derek’s head. “Stop brooding. It’s annoying.”

“I’m not brooding,” Derek snapped.

“Are too,” Stiles replied, sounding like a petulant toddler. “It’s one race, Derek. People crash all the time. It wasn’t even your fault. You have thirty-two more races, you know. Can you just pull the stick out of your ass for one day? We’re going to see the Daytona 500 tomorrow. Don’t even pretend like you’re not even a little bit excited about that.”

“Not even a little,” Derek said flatly.

“Liar,” Stiles retorted. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back against the remaining pile of pillows on his bed. Stiles ignored Derek’s silent brooding for the rest of the night and fell asleep somewhere around his fourth episode of Honey Boo Boo.

He woke up to something jabbing him in the shoulder. He tried to squirm away to the other side of his bed, but the poking continued. He rolled over only to get poked in the side of his face.

“Mmrph,” he muttered unintelligibly. “Whas hap’ning?” He heard an impatient sigh.

“Stiles, you’ve been asleep for almost twelve hours. If you actually want to see the race today, get your ass out of bed.”

“Is it mornin’ already?” His voice was still thick from sleep and he wiped the back of his hand across the corner of his mouth, checking for drool.

“It’s almost noon. The race starts in a little over an hour. So get up already.” Derek punctuated the last few words with pokes to Stiles’ shoulder. 

Stiles rolled out of his bed, rubbing at the spot Derek had been stabbing with his finger. “Calm down, sourwolf. We’re literally right across from the track. We’ve got plenty of time. It’ll take me like ten minutes to shower and I’ll be ready. Sheesh.”

“Stop calling me that,” Derek sighed, flicking the pen from the table at Stiles.

He ducked the projectile, sticking out his tongue in victory. “Never!” He yelled as he shut the bathroom door.

True to his word, Stiles showered quickly, rushing out of the steamy bathroom in a towel to dig through his bag for his last clean shirt. Derek was very intently watching an episode of Amish Mafia.

“And you judge me for Honey Boo Boo,” Stiles muttered under his breath as he walked back to the bathroom to change. Derek didn’t even acknowledge his existence.

Stiles gave Derek his best I told you so face when they made it to the race not only in time for driver introductions, but they even had enough time to get hot dogs. Derek, as always, scowled at Stiles, like he couldn’t believe he was stuck here with the equivalent of an adult-sized toddler. Despite his sour face, Stiles knew Derek was still enjoying it. Not included all the shorter pre season races he had gone to earlier this week, this was Derek’s first actual NASCAR race and even he couldn’t pretend to hate it.

After the race it was a headache inducing rush to pack up their hotel room and get to the airport on time. Stiles didn’t even know how one of his socks had ended up in the mini fridge, and Derek kept criticizing the way he packed his bag. By packed, Stiles meant shove everything in at once and hope the zipper actually closes. Derek happened to be one of those maddeningly organized people who folded everything into nice neat piles. His clothes were dirty, who cared if they got wrinkled, Stiles argued.

This time the skies were clear, which was probably a good thing for Derek. The rest of the team would be flying with them on the way home and Stiles somehow doubted some of their team members would be as understanding of Derek’s fear of flying. He did end up stuck between Stiles and Scott on the flight between Orlando and Los Angeles, where he was, no doubt, plenty distracted by the two of them.


	8. Chapter 8

Come Monday morning they were all back at the shop in Beacon Hills, yawning their way through the morning. John came down to give what he liked to jokingly refer to as his ‘Weekend Update.’ He went over how they did that weekend, where they did well and where they needed to improve. After his dad’s speech he went to the team breakroom, where he had hung their goal chart for the season. The gigantic chart had lines drawn horizontally across from 1 down to 40 for points position. The bottom of the chart had a line for every race of the season. There was a red line drawn across the whole chart at fifteenth place, their goal for the season.

Stiles sighed as he affixed a red sticker to 36th place above the space for Daytona. Derek chose that moment to walk in, frowning slightly at the sight of the chart. 

“Sorry,” he muttered as he leaned against the counter, giving Stiles a truly apologetic look.

“Stop it,” Stiles snapped, tossing the sharpie in his hand halfheartedly at Derek’s face. “Stop apologizing you idiot. I told you, that accident wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could do to avoid it. Don’t be such a martyr all the time, for Christ’s sake.”

Derek shrugged. “I still think I could have done better at Daytona. And I don’t mean just in the race. Maybe people would actually be taking me seriously if I hadn’t raced like shit in practice. I read the articles, Stiles. When they actually do mention me they make it sound like it was just a fluke that I even qualified for the race.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you’ve got the entire rest of the season to prove them wrong. Stop reading the bullshit they’re writing about you. Go home and get some proper sleep. We’re leaving for Phoenix on Wednesday morning. Don’t worry, we’ll be driving this time.” 

Stiles had the pleasure of spending the rest of his afternoon supervising the unloading and cleaning of the hauler as it arrived back at the shop. The mangled car was like a punch to Stiles’ gut. Thank God they raced a slightly different car at Phoenix, so they would be fine for the next race. The team only had three cars for the 2014 season though. So they only had two cars until this one was fixed. Hopefully Derek didn’t wreck another one. They could only afford so much.

*****

Despite the fact they they were close enough to drive to Phoenix, it was still took them almost as long as it did for them to fly across the entire country for Daytona. It was a twelve hour drive so each van had at least four people who switched off driving every three hours. The three hour marker was a pretty good point for them to stop and take breaks.

Stiles ended up in a van with Scott, Isaac, and Derek. Most of the other vans had packed more people in, whereas they ended up in the van that got packed halfway full with everyone’s bags. Stiles always tended to end up in the luggage van. It may have had something to do with his predilection for falling asleep on whoever was sitting next to him. He couldn’t help it that car rides put him to sleep.

He woke up after their second three hour stint to find a very intense pair of hazel-green eyes staring directly into his own. Stiles thought he had woken up due to the van stopping, but Derek was holding him up by the shoulders, giving him a strange look. At that moment Stiles noticed the dark splotch on Derek’s T-Shirt. His eyes went wide as he slowly brought his hand up to rub at his mouth.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, biting his lip, trying not to laugh hysterically at the enormous drool stain he had apparently just left on Derek’s shoulder. He was a little bit mortified. It wasn’t the first time he had fallen asleep on someone’s shoulder and it most certainly wouldn’t be the last, but usually people tended to shove him off long before he ever got to the drooling stage. 

“You drooled on me,” Derek said in a disbelieving tone.

“Yeah, and again, sorry. I don’t usually do that.” His voice got sort of weird and high at the end of the sentence. “Um, so are you going to move, because I kind of want to go use the bathroom while we’re here,” Stiles said awkwardly.

Derek scooted out of the seat, letting Stiles slide out after him. Stiles practically sprinted past Derek to the rest stop bathrooms. When he emerged he planned on heading back to the van, but the sight of Derek stopped him in his tracks. Derek had dug his bag out from the pile in the back of the van. He had stripped off his drool covered shirt and was digging through his bag for a clean one, naked from the waist up. The sun reflected brightly off his slightly tanned back, muscles flexing as he stretched a new shirt over his torso.

Taking a huge gulp of air, Stiles backed his way back into the rest stop building. He found himself staring blankly at the candy machine, trying to force his erection away by thinking about dead puppies and his grandmother. Scott popped up out of nowhere, elbowing him playfully in the ribs.

“Sleep well?” he asked, with a gleeful tone.

“Shut up,” Stiles muttered. “I’ll fall asleep on anything if it stays still long enough.” Scott cackled.

“Yeah, I know. Erica totally thought it was adorable, though.”

“Erica?” Stiles asked snapping back to attention. “Erica’s not here. How does Erica know about this? Did you text her? Damn it, Scott, don’t encourage her. She’s bad enough already.”

Scott grinned sheepishly. “I might have sent her a picture,” he said, trying to bite back his smile.

“A picture?” Stiles hissed. “You took a picture of me drooling all over Derek? Oh my God, he’s already going to tear me in half for drooling on him.”

Scott pulled out his phone and brought up the picture in question. Stiles knew he had been sleeping on Derek, the thing was he had no idea that Derek had fallen asleep on Stiles as well. At least that explained why he hadn’t pushed Stiles away. He blushed when he looked closely at the picture. There was a tiny glistening string of saliva leading from the corner of Stiles’ mouth down to the sleeve of Derek’s shirt. Derek had his head tilted against Stiles’ and actually didn’t look like he was about to go kick a puppy. Dark eyelashes fanned across his cheeks, his nose buried in Stiles’ hair, mouth relaxed and peaceful looking.

“He kept trying to get you to put your head somewhere else, but you just kept shoving your face at him and I think he kind of gave up. It was kind of hilarious to watch,” Scott told him, shoving his phone back into his jeans.

“I still can’t believe he let me sleep on him. I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”

“Probably not,” Scott replied with a smile that didn’t spell good news for Stiles. “You better hurry up, though. We’re going to be leaving in a minute.”

Stiles turned back to the candy machine, digging around in his pocket for some change. He got a Reese’s and jogged back out to the van thankful to see that Derek and his shirtless upper body were nowhere to be seen. It was supposed to be his shift to drive, but when he opened the driver’s side door, Derek was already buckled in and waiting.

“Dude, I thought it was my shift to drive?”

“You seemed pretty tired, so I thought I could drive if you wanted to sleep more.” Derek sounded awkward, like he had something stuck in the back of his throat making his voice come out rough.

Stiles flapped his hand. “Nah, I’m fine. Riding in cars just puts me to sleep, no matter what.”

“All the more reason for me to drive,” Derek said more firmly this time. “Can you just get in the van, already. Everyone else is leaving.”

“Whatever, sourwolf. Suit yourself.” 

Stiles spent the next three hours debating whether Derek was actually being nice to him or whether he wanted to drive just so Stiles didn’t drool on him anymore. Okay, so he would have spent three hours thinking about it if Scott hadn’t distracted him with a very intense session of draw something.

They stopped at a Denny’s just shy of the Arizona border at the end of the third shift of driving. They didn’t bother trying to sit together as an entire team. It made things easier for them to just eat with their van mates. With only the four of them, they were seated in one of the smaller booths in the restaurant. Stiles slid into the seat first, absently thinking Scott would follow him. Scott, however, slid into the seat across from Stiles and was quickly followed by Isaac, leaving Derek next to Stiles.

Stiles was acutely aware of how Derek’s thigh pressed up against his own in the cramped booth. Derek scowled at him as their elbows knocked when Stiles tried to grab his menu. Awesome, so he was still feeling grumpy and Stiles couldn’t exactly run away at this point.

Somehow, after dinner, Isaac had volunteered to drive the last stretch, leaving Stiles and Derek in the back again. Stiles took drastic measures. He popped open a can of Full Throttle he’d been saving in his backpack and tore open a bag of skittles. There was no way he was going to fall asleep on Derek again. The thing is it was already easy enough for him to be lulled to sleep by the motion of the car, but it was even easier in the fading daylight of late February.

His head keep lolling forward before he could jerk himself back awake. Derek had his headphones plugged into his phone, but kept giving Stiles weird looks every time he noticed Stiles’ jerking movements out of the corner of his eye. Stiles managed to stay awake for nearly an hour, before he jerked his head so far over that he cracked the side of his head against the window. 

Derek ripped one of his earbuds out with an annoyed grimace. “For fuck’s sake, Stiles,” he hissed. “You can sleep on my shoulder again. You’re going to give yourself a concussion if you keep doing that.”

Stiles stared at him wide-eyed like a deer caught in headlight. “Um, are you sure? Because--”

“Stiles.” Derek interrupted. “I don’t care. Just try not to drool so much. I didn’t bring that many shirts with me.” Derek looked pointedly at Stiles then down to his shoulder before jamming the earbud back into his ear.

If he thought waking up on Derek had been awkward, this was so much worse. He looked around awkwardly for a moment, but everyone including Derek seemed to be ignoring him. Stiles shifted sideways in his seat slightly, lowering his head to Derek’s shoulder slowly. At first he didn’t think he’d ever be able to fall asleep like this, acutely aware of every inch of Derek that he was touching. It didn’t take long however. Derek’s heart beat a steady lullaby against his cheek putting him to sleep in moments.

He could feel his body shaking, but the soft warmth under his cheek felt so nice. “Mmmph. ‘m sleepn’” he mumbled into his makeshift pillow.

“Stiles,” Derek said, his voice tickling the exposed side of his face. “Stiles, get up; we’re here,” he grunted. “Wake up, damn it. I’m not carrying you up to our room.”

Stiles rubbed his face once more into what he had thought was a very hard pillow until he belatedly remembered he had been resting his face on Derek. He pulled back, quickly, ears burning red. The back of his head knocked against Derek’s chin. He heard Derek’s teeth clack together loudly.

“Ah, fuck. Jesus, Stiles.” Derek swore.

“Sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry. Are you okay?” Stiles apologized quickly.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s just get inside already. I’m tired.”

When they got their room settled, Derek immediately laid in his bed, blinking tiredly at the ceiling. Stiles of course, having slept half the day was wide awake. He bounced around the hotel room checking out the features of their room, not that there were many at a Holiday Inn, before flopping down on his bed and turning on the TV. After changing the channel for the fifth time Derek growled.

“Just pick one god damned show, Stiles. Better yet, go to sleep; I’m fucking tired.”

“But I’m not tired,” Stiles whined piteously. 

“Maybe you shouldn’t have spent half the drive napping then,” Derek snarled back.

“I can’t help it,” Stiles said. “Cars put me to sleep like a newborn baby.”

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s just cars,” Derek snarked back.

“Yeah,” Stiles said airily. “Maybe it’s just your body then.” Stiles clamped his mouth shut a moment too late when he realized how that sounded.

Derek let out a snorting sort of half laugh, half cough. “Just turn the volume down some. I’m not letting you use me as a pillow tonight.”

“Yep, sure,” Stiles said laughing nervously as he punched the volume button on the remote. He watched Futurama quietly in the dark, cursing his stupid mouth and it’s inability to stay shut.

Their first practice was the next day and Stiles once again became the distractor. He went down to breakfast with Derek, completely pretending like yesterday didn’t happen and somehow ended up spending most of their time rambling off the history of doughnuts to Derek. Stiles almost missed Jackson’s cocky arrogance some days. Sure it was annoying, but keeping Derek from overthinking and second guessing everything he ever did was getting exhausting.

Stiles helped Derek into the car that afternoon spewing forth a stream of platitudes meant to be soothing, though he probably was starting to sound more like an overbearing mother at this point. Phoenix seemed to be easier on Derek. It was much shorter than Daytona, but at a mile long it still wasn’t a short track. Derek’s first practice was unremarkable and Stiles was a little relieved.

It kept Derek out of the spotlight, yet it wasn’t so terrible as to make Derek have doubts. He had plenty of notes to give his engineers for the rest of the day. They would make a few adjustments to the car tonight and Derek could go again tomorrow, hopefully getting a feel for the track and getting a little better.

Events at Phoenix were much quieter than how things had gone at Daytona. With the season beginning at Daytona, Stiles and Derek had been bouncing back and forth between practices at the track, meetings and photoshoots with NASCAR, and interviews. There wasn’t much of that at Phoenix. With the majority of the crew working on the car, Stiles and Derek had the rest of their evening free. Stiles wheedled Derek into going to the Robocop reboot movie with him at a theatre.

“Come on, Derek,” Stiles whined stretching out Derek’s name. “Please.”

“No.” Derek said, not looking up from the book he was holding.

“But I’m so bored,” Stiles pleaded.

“So go to the damned movie then.” Derek snapped.

“But I don’t want to go alone,” Stiles whined a little louder.

“Well then wait for Scott to get back from the garage.”

“He promised Allison he would Skype her tonight,” Stiles sighed, flopping over on to his stomach so he was sprawled sideways across his bed facing Derek.

“Then ask Isaac.”

“Isaac already saw it,” Stiles pouted.

“Jesus, Stiles. There’s still probably fifteen other people on the crew that you haven’t asked yet. Go ask someone else.”

“Derek,” Stiles whined long and drawn out. “I wanna go now. Come on.”

“Do you not understand the concept of no? I’m reading; shut the fuck up.”

Stiles put his hands under his chin and stared at Derek, giving him his best sad puppy face. He couldn’t do it quite as well as Scott. That kid could imitate a kicked puppy pretty well. Nobody could say no to that face. It’s probably the only reason Allison was still dating him. He gave it his best try anyway.

“Stop giving me that look, Stiles; I said no.” Derek tried not to look at him, but Stiles was prepared to wait him out. Derek finally folded over the corner of the page he’d been on for the past five minutes. “Fine,” he half shouted. “We can go to the stupid movie. God you’re insufferable. No wonder why Jackson left.”

“Hey,” Stiles said indignantly pretending to look hurt. 

Derek rolled his eyes, but a hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. Stiles spent half of the movie whispering to Derek about the quality of the CGI and how good Gary Oldman’s acting was. Derek elbowed him in the ribs every time in a failed attempt to shut him up, but didn’t complain when Stiles ate more than his fair share of the popcorn Derek paid for. 

Stiles’ prediction the previous day had been correct. With Derek not freaking out about how well he was doing along with the changes the crew had made to the car, he did great the next day. In final practice Derek finished his day with a lap time that put him in the top ten in practice. Stiles shut his laptop with a gigantic grin as Derek left the track.

“Nice job today,” he said to Derek as they walked down the road from their hotel to the Chili’s nearby for dinner.

Derek shrugged like it was no big deal. “It was just practice, doesn’t really matter.”

“No, maybe not, but I think you’ll do much better here than at Daytona.” He replied, bumping shoulders slightly with Derek.

Derek shrugged again. “Maybe.”

Derek wasn’t exactly exuding confidence, but at least this uncaring state he seemed to be in was still better than the spiral of self pity he’d gone into after the last race. So he let the subject drop for now.

After dinner Stiles actually left Derek alone to read in peace for the night, while he joined Scott and Isaac in their room to binge on some more reality TV. Stiles had a problem and his problem’s name was Honey Boo Boo. Actually his problem’s name was more like reality TV in general, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo just seemed to be his latest obsession. Mostly he liked being able to watch something mind numbingly useless because he’d used his brain enough for one day.

Still, he was back to his own room by ten. They had an early morning with qualifying happening before the race again. Derek already had the lights off and looked asleep when Stiles got back. Normally he’d make a crack about Derek being an old man, but he couldn’t really complain about Derek’s fun sucking ways if it meant he had a well rested driver in the morning.

Derek as usual was up and showered before Stiles’ alarm even went off. They ate breakfast in silence, this time with Derek being the one to nervously jiggle his leg up and down as he waited for Stiles to finish. Stiles gave him a pointed look with an eyebrow cocked.

“Normally, you’d be yelling at me to sit still if that were me doing that,” Stiles said gesturing at Derek’s wiggling knee.

“Shut up,” Derek retorted childishly. 

“Oooh, good come back, sourwolf. Shut up. I never would have thought of something that good on my own.” Stiles mocked.

“You’re an idiot,” Derek grumbled. 

“Yeah, but you’re stuck with me. You know, contract, yadda yadda yadda.” He gestured aimlessly, with one hand, stuffing the rest of his blueberry muffin in his mouth with the other.

“You done yet?” Derek asked. “It’s not like we have anywhere to be or anything today.” He said with an exaggerated eye roll.

Derek was slated to run in the last group for qualifying sessions, leaving him pacing the garage nervously as he waited his turn. Stiles kind of wanted to punch him or tie him down to a chair or something. It was driving him mad.

“Just get in the car already,” Stiles finally snapped. “You’re driving me crazy.”

Derek looked a little bit taken aback by Stiles’ outburst, but he wordlessly climbed into the cockpit of his car nonetheless. Stiles passed his helmet through the window when Derek had his five point harness buckled and tightened.

“You’re going to do fine,” Stiles sighed in annoyance. “It’s just qualifying, Derek.”

Stiles was right. Derek did do fine. In fact he did more than fine. 

“Twelfth place,” Stiles told Derek as he climbed out of the car. “You’ll be starting in row six. Not bad, Hale. Told you, you’d do fine.”

“It’s just qualifying.” Derek said. “It doesn’t matter where I start the race. It matters where I finish.”

“That’s literally what I was trying to tell you like an hour ago, Derek. God, you’re impossible,” Stiles replied, shaking his head.

“Good to go, sourwolf?” Stiles asked over the radio as Derek circled the track on the pace laps. 

“I’m fine, Stiles,” Derek answered sounding vaguely annoyed.

“Great. Just don’t crash the car and we’ll be fine.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” Derek grunted. Stiles laughed dryly. 

Unlike at Daytona where Derek had to rely on other drivers to draft with, he didn’t need anyone’s help at Phoenix. He easily kept pace with the lead pack throughout the race. The pit stops went smoothly and Derek stayed within the top twenty the entire afternoon. Stiles beamed with pride when he heard the announcers mention what a great, consistent run Derek was having, especially after their bad week at Daytona.

In the end Derek came out sixteenth. Stiles was feeling pretty great about it. Derek however looked disappointed as he stepped out of the car. Stiles clapped him on the back.

“You did good today.”

“Not that good,” Derek sighed.

Stiles grabbed him by the shoulders, turning Derek to face him completely. “Derek. You didn’t crash the car. We gained positions in the points standings. Nobody said bad things about you. This was a good day. Things aren’t going to always either go horribly wrong, or incredibly well. There’s a middle ground, Derek and there’s nothing wrong with being in the middle right now.” He looked in Derek’s eyes with his eyebrows raised, releasing him when he was sure he’d gotten the message.

That night, back at the hotel, Stiles let Derek borrow his laptop to Skype Laura. He unashamedly listened to every word. It was his laptop after all. Eventually getting annoyed, he popped up over Derek’s shoulder to interrupt.

“Laura, can you tell your brother that sixteenth place isn’t bad? I’m getting sick of him moping.” Derek frowned, and put his palm directly in Stiles’ face and pushed, making Stiles flop over onto the bed with an indignant squawk. 

“I’m not moping,” Derek denied.

“No, but really, Der, you should be more excited about this. I know you want to do well, but it’s only your second race. Most of these guys have had way more experience than you before they even made it this far. I think you’re doing amazing.”

“Thanks, Laura.” 

“I told Stiles already, but I should be able to come see you in a few weeks when you’re in Fontana. I managed to clear my schedule for that weekend. I’m really proud of you, Der. Stiles, you better make sure nothing happens to my brother,” She yelled into her computer.

“Yes, ma’am!” Stiles barked, from where he was still lying on Derek’s bed.

Laura and Derek exchanged their goodbyes before disconnecting.

“Your sister scares me just a little bit sometimes,” Stiles admitted to Derek, who was now sitting in the desk chair backwards, arms hugging the back.

“You should have seen her as a kid,” Derek said with a soft smile. “She was a little terror. At one point she wanted to be a hair stylist. She tried to give my little sister, Cora, a haircut, but she kept screwing it up so she kept cutting it shorter and shorter and it just kept getting worse. Eventually she told my parents that Cora accidentally got a hold of some scissors and did that to herself.”

“Psssh,” Stiles waved dismissively. “What little kid hasn’t done that? I’m pretty sure I tried to give Scott a haircut when we were eight. It definitely ended with lots of tears.”

“Laura was sixteen when she did that,” Derek said with a straight face.

Stiles flopped his arm over his face and snorted into the inside of his elbow. “Your sister’s a real piece of work.”

“Yeah,” Derek agreed.

Stiles drove as much as he could on the way home. Partly because he felt guilty for not driving at all on the way down, but mostly because he didn’t want to fall asleep on Derek again. Between driving stints he whiled away the rest of his time in the van playing angry birds and anything else he could find on his phone to keep himself occupied.

He had completely forgotten about the picture until he walked into the shop on Monday morning and Erica greeted him with a large, toothy grin. Instincts told him to avoid her at all costs, but logically he knew she would corner him eventually, so he might as well get whatever it was over with now.

“Stiles,” she said brightly. “Like the new background on my phone?” she asked, nonchalantly showing Stiles the screen of her phone. Stiles rolled his eyes.

“Ha ha, very nice,” he drawled.

“Oh, come on,” she wheedled. “I think it’s cute. It’s about time the two of you got your shit together.”

“What do you mean it’s about time we got our shit together?” Stiles asked suspiciously. 

“Aren’t you two--” Erica trailed off at the expression on Stiles’ face. “So you’re not--”

“Nope,” Stiles answered firmly.

“Oh, honey,” Erica breathed.

“Can we not talk about my ridiculous embarrassing crush on one of my employees?” Stiles groaned.

“Ridiculous?” Erica scoffed. “Stiles, hon, I’ve seen the way that man looks at you sometimes. The only time Derek doesn’t look like he’s about to murder a bunch of helpless kittens is when he’s around you.”

“That doesn’t mean he has _feelings_ for me, Erica. At most, he tolerates me now.”

“Stiles--” she started.

“No. Can we not do this now, Erica? I’m just gonna go back to hopeless pining. I’m good at that; I’m used to that.”

“Fine, but you’re wrong, Stiles,” she sighed, letting the matter drop.

Stiles joined the team downstairs for the weekend update, which was far more positive than last week’s. The highlight of his morning was going into the breakroom and affixing another red sticker to the chart. This week’s went on the line for 30th place. Derek’s finish may not have been spectacular, but gaining six positions in the points standings was no joke.


	9. Chapter 9

They drove again to the next race in Las Vegas, another intermediate track just a little bit longer than Phoenix. Derek gained confidence like a rolling snowball gathering mass. His practice sessions got better, and so did his race finishes. They came back from Las Vegas with a twelfth place finish, Stiles adding another sticker higher up on the chart. 

The next week they flew to Bristol, Derek’s first short track. Derek got asked for his first autograph as they left their hotel room for practice one morning. It was a little girl, who couldn’t have been more than eight. She shyly held out an autograph book and a pen in her outstretched arms. The soft smile Derek gave her as he knelt down to sign the next empty page turned Stiles’ legs to jelly. They left Bristol with a fifteenth place finish, nudging Derek up in points another spot or two. 

The week after that they were in Fontana. It was the only race the Nationwide series had in California, making it the closest thing Derek could call a ‘home track.’ As promised, Laura made an appearance, taking advantage of Stiles’ agreement to provide her with a pit pass for any race in the season. Stiles and Laura cheered Derek on from the pit box, where he earned his first top ten finish, ending the race in sixth place. 

It was the first time he’d finished high enough to get a post-race interview. His hands shook so much he ended up missing half his mouth when he tried to take a drink from his can of Full Throttle on camera, dripping it down the side of his chin and over the front of his fire suit. Stiles bit the sleeve of his shirt trying not to interrupt the interview with his laughter. The entire team went out to dinner to celebrate and Stiles had never seen Derek look so happy for such an extended period of time.

The spring blurred by and by mid May Derek had already reached their goal of fifteenth place in points. Sure he had to keep himself there, but he had made the goal before the first half of the season and Stiles was pretty proud of that. 

Stiles got used to the routine. Wednesdays they would fly, or drive in some cases, to the track. Thursdays and Fridays were spent practicing and qualifying, and Saturdays were race days. He didn’t even need to give Derek periodic pep talks anymore. He actually was feeling comfortable with the car, the team, and he was even getting used to flying. Stiles couldn’t have asked for a better season.

*****

It wasn’t until June that Derek started acting weird again. When Stiles confronted him about it he finally admitted that he was nervous about the first road course race. Stiles rolled his eyes, convinced that Derek was being overdramatic, but took the opportunity of their week off to book two afternoons at Sonoma for Derek to practice.

Stiles wasn’t sure if the practice sessions would even benefit Derek. The Nationwide race was at Road America in Wisconsin, a completely different track. Derek also wasn’t actually racing against anyone, just taking practice laps on his own. It couldn’t hurt though. Whatever Derek needed to make himself feel more comfortable. They had a race at Michigan in between, enough to distract Derek for a few days. 

Stiles added another sticker to the chart in the breakroom that Monday. Derek had been holding steady at 14th place the last three weeks. Derek was in the breakroom with him, staring blankly at the chart with unseeing eyes. Stiles nudged him gently in the shoulder.

“Dude, you in there? What’s up?”

“Just thinking about Road America.” Derek sighed.

“Are you still freaking out about that?” Stiles asked. “Come on, Derek. I thought you were good. You practiced at Sonoma and you did just fine. Sure, Road America is a different course, but you’ve got this. I know you do.”

“I just have never raced with other people on a road course. It’s just been practice laps. I don’t even know how to pass people. I’ve just been doing sort of okay since Daytona and I don’t want to screw it all up in one race.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, giving Derek’s shoulder a small squeeze. “You’re not going to screw it up and even if you do, one bad finish isn’t going to ruin your entire season. On the bright side, it’s one of our stand alone races, so you don’t have to worry about competing against very many cup guys this time.”

“Yeah, but some teams bring in road course specialists to replace them for this race. How is that any better,” Derek said dryly.

Stiles threw his hands in the air with defeat. “Fine, I’ll stop trying to make you feel better. Go be all broody then. I have better things to do,” Stiles shouted, leaving Derek behind in the break room by himself.

Unlike just about every other track on the circuit, Road America was a track that wasn’t located near a major city. The team had to fly into Milwaukee and then drive over an hour north to the small town of Elkhart Lake. Stiles groaned, bored, as he stared out the window of their rental car. It had been nothing but fields and farms since they left Milwaukee.

“Oh, look, more cows,” he said without enthusiasm. “Are we there yet?” He whined to Scott.

“Stiles, it’s only been half an hour. No. We’re not there yet.” 

Stiles huffed, staring out the window, before he remembered how boring it was. He got out his phone for a moment, before remembering he had killed his battery on the plane. Derek was in the back seat with him, reading a paperback. He always seemed to have a book or two stashed away somewhere when they were traveling. Stiles usually poked fun at him bragging about how much easier it was to carry around a couple hundred books on his tablet or phone. Now he stared at Derek’s paperback with a jealous longing.

He shoved his head over into Derek’s space, trying to get a good look at the book. “Whatcha readin’?” he asked in a casual tone. 

“A book,” Derek muttered, nudging Stiles’ face away with his elbow. “Go away.”

Stiles sighed and pushed himself back over to his side of the car. He swore it was the longest hour of his life. 

Normally they stayed in chain hotels like Holiday Inn because they could get discounts for having to rent so many rooms for the whole crew. Elkhart Lake was another story. There were about three options when it came to hotels. This year they were staying at Siebkens Resort. It was a three story, sprawling white building that reminded him of an overly large southern plantation house. It was right on the edge of the lake, opening up on a private beach for hotel patrons.

When they woke up the next morning, getting ready to head to the track for practice the sky was a perfect sunny blue. By the time they ate breakfast and made it to the track, that perfect shade of blue had been replaced by the dismal grey of rain clouds. Stiles checked the weather app on his phone, wondering if they were even going to get practice in. His phone said it was supposed to be partly cloudy and that there was only a thirty percent chance of rain, so he assumed the clouds were just passing by.

However when their car was set up and ready to go, fat drops of water began to fall from the sky making a gentle pitter-patter sound on the concrete. The gentle pitter-patter of raindrops didn’t let up either. They steadily increased until the pitter-patter sound turned into an almost quiet roar of raindrops dashing against the buildings around them. The officials called practice for the day, predicting that the rain was not going to let up long enough for them to dry the track.

This was what Stiles hated the worst about Elkhart Lake. When they ended up stuck with no work to do, they ended up sitting around in their hotel rooms zoning out to some horrible daytime TV.

“We need to get out of here,” Stiles said desperately. “I’m so bored.” Derek made a noncommittal noise from behind his paperback. “Derek, seriously. I am going to die. Of boredom. If we do not leave this room soon.”

“And where exactly do you suggest we go?” Derek asked. “The population of this town is less than a thousand people, there’s not even a McDonald’s in this town it’s so small.”

“There’s got to be something,” he whined, pulling out his tablet. He brought up Google to do a search. “Here we go. Attractions in Elkhart Lake. Let’s see. Spa, no. Campground, definitely not. Hmmm Elkhart Lake Depot Museum. Century-old railroad station houses, original depot furnishings, and memorabilia recording the history of this resort community.” He said reading the description with fake enthusiasm.

“I’ll pass,” Derek muttered from behind his book.

“Don’t worry. There’s plenty more options,” he said continuing to read down the list. “Ooh. Henschel’s Indian Museum _and_ Trout Farm. Come for the fishing, stay for the museum,” Stiles read giddily. “Look you don’t even need a fishing license, and they’ll even clean them for you when you’re done. Then after we finish fishing we can go check out their collection of arrowheads.”

“I literally can’t think of anything that sounds worse than that,” Derek said darkly, flopping his paperback onto his stomach not even pretending to read anymore.

“I think my dad would actually kind of like that,” Stiles said thoughtfully. “He’s kind of terrible at fishing. I swear the last time he went, he bought a fish and pretended like he’d caught it just so I would stop teasing him.” Stiles looked back down at his tablet. “Well, then how would you like to go down to the Herrling Saw Mill? It’s a replica of an 1860’s water powered saw mill.”

“Are you just making things up now?” Derek asked suspiciously.

“Nope,” Stiles replied, popping the ‘p.’ “I told you, this place is exciting,” he said with bitter sarcasm. “We could take a drive along the historic race circuit. Then again, I think I saw enough of the scenery on the drive up. There’s the Sheboygan County Historical Musuem. Ooh, there’s even a cheese factory there. I do like cheese.”

Derek sighed loudly. “You’ll eat anything that stays still long enough.”

Stiles choked on his own spit, laughing so hard. “Dude, what are you implying?”

Derek rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “All I’m saying is that last week I saw you eat half the paper your cheese burger was wrapped in.”

“I didn’t eat the paper!” Stiles squeaked. “There was cheese on it. I was eating the cheese off the paper. I like cheese, Derek.”

“I’m pretty sure you still ingested a fair amount of paper with that cheese,” Derek scoffed.

“Asshole,” Stiles muttered. “All right, last option on the list. The Wesley Jung Carriage Museum. It features a collection of 140 horse and hand drawn carriages from between 1870 and 1920, the heydey of the horse.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll just stay here. Have fun at the carriage museum, Stiles.” Derek pulled his paperback up off his stomach and pretended to ignore Stiles some more.

“Derek,” Stiles whined piteously, tossing his tablet down on the bed. “Come on. Do something with me please.”

“Fine,” he roared, tossing his book down. “If it will make you shut up. But we’re not doing any of the things on that list.” 

“Whatever you want. Just get me out of this room.” Stiles agreed instantly.

Derek led him downstairs to the hotel bar where he ordered them two bottles of Spotted Cow. He grabbed the bottles of beer, throwing a ten on the bar and handed one bottle off to Stiles. They wandered out of the bar onto the deck. The rain had stopped a while ago and the sun was peeking out from behind the last of the clouds still dotting the sky.

Stiles noticed a path leading down to a dock on the lake. He motioned for Derek to follow him, leading him down to sit out at the end of the dock. Stiles took off his shoes and socks and rolled his jeans up to his knees so he could sink his feet into the cool water of the lake. Derek wrinkled his nose at the lake water, but the heat must have gotten the best of him, because he eventually followed suit and removed his shoes and socks, letting his legs hang in the water next to Stiles’. 

“You still feeling nervous about the race?” Stiles asked, breaking the silence between them.

Derek took a long pull of his beer, adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “Some,” he answered. “I talked to Laura about it though, so you can stop treating me like I’m going to have an emotional breakdown over this.”

Stiles huffed, lips quirking upwards into a smile. “Sorry, but it’s kind of my job to worry about you, you know? We don’t exactly have much of a backup plan if something happens to you. Also, I may never admit this again, but I kind of like you. I mean Jackson was a good driver, but, lord, was he an asshole. It’s nice to work with someone who doesn’t think the sun shines out their ass. Plus, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be hanging out with me like this. I don’t exactly have a lot of friends, so thanks I guess, for willingly spending time with me.”

“Who said anything about willingly?” Derek joked.

“Oh, shut up, asshole,” Stiles said, pushing Derek’s shoulder. “I will throw your sorry ass in the lake.”

Derek snorted. “Like you could move me with that scrawny body of yours.”

“Scrawny?” Stiles screeched indignantly. “It’s called lean, Derek. I have muscles. They’re just not so ridiculously gigantic that I’m in danger of ripping all my shirts with the slightest movement of my arm.”

“Call it what you want,” Derek said loftily, tossing back the remainder of his beer. “But most people I know would call you scrawny. Maybe you should join the team for a couple of our workout sessions.”

Stiles stuck his tongue out at Derek, unable to think of a proper comeback. He shoved as hard as he could at Derek’s chest, but the guy might have well as been a brick wall for all the good it did. Derek shoved Stiles right back. Stiles, however, was not built like a brick wall. He windmilled his arms feeling his legs start to slide off the dock, feet thrashing about in the water. Derek fisted his hand in Stiles’ shirt, yanking him back from the edge.

Instead of landing in the water, Stiles found himself careening face first into Derek’s chest. He would have been more mad, but Derek’s chest was shaking with laughter and one arm was loosely gripping Stiles at the waist. 

“Sorry,” he laughed. “I guess I don’t know my own strength. I have been told that I have ridiculously, gigantic, shirt ripping muscles, so I guess I should be more careful.”

Stiles pushed himself off of Derek’s chest with one hand, the other still clutching his surprisingly unspilled beer. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you pick,” he grumbled. 

“Please, this is a thousand times better than going to some weird museum. We should go find something to eat. I’m starving.”

Too lazy to drive anywhere, they ate at the restaurant in the hotel. They eventually meandered into the bar area where a decent number of their crew was already gathered. Stiles winced at the loud country song emanating from the jukebox, but found two open seats at the bar so he was just going to have to put up with it. 

Stiles came to, starfished out on his hotel bed, not even under the blankets. There was an enormous puddle of drool soaking through the pillow his head was on. His head pounded in a constant rhythm that practically matched the beeping of the alarm clock. He rolled until he could reach it, slamming his hand down on the snooze button. From his new position he could see Derek standing in the doorway of the bathroom with an amused look on his face as he brushed his teeth.

“Don’t let me drink,” Stiles moaned into his pillow. “Don’t let me drink ever again.”

“If you hurry up, we can still get some breakfast before driving out to the track,” Derek told him after spitting out a mouthful of white toothpaste foam.

“How are you not hungover?” Stiles asked. “I’m pretty sure you took more shots than I did last night.”

“I guess some of us are just better at holding our liquor.”

“Ugh. You’re not fair. Do I look hungover?”

“You look like death warmed over, to be honest.”

“Oh, god. My dad is going to see me and he’s going to give me that disappointed parent face. I hate that face. It’s the worst of all the faces.”

“Yeah, but you always kind of look like death, just a little bit. So maybe you can just pass it off as being tired.”

“Derek, this is my dad we are talking about. Not just a parent, but also an ex-cop. He might as well be a walking lie detector.”

“You do realize you’re twenty four, Stiles. You haven’t broken the law or anything.”

“Yeah, but coming to work hungover is still going to earn me the frowny face of disappointment.”

“Well, hurry up. At least you can disappoint your father on a full stomach if we leave within the next twenty minutes.

The weather outside was cloudy and overcast again, but the rain stayed away long enough for them to get practice in this time. It was the first time Derek got to race a road course alongside other drivers. It was just practice though, so other drivers weren’t likely to try and make difficult passes or race each other hard through certain sections of the track. At least Derek got to get a feel for the layout once before he raced.

Stiles went to bed early that night, feeling a combination of worn out from his lack of sleep the prior night and anxious about Derek racing the next day. He gave Derek a weak smile over breakfast and reassured him that it didn’t matter how he did today. He was having a good season as it was.

The sky couldn’t seem to make up it’s mind that day, ever changing between bright sunny blue, and gloomy looking clouds. Stiles wondered if the weather was going to have an effect on the outcome of the race that afternoon. He would have to remember to keep checking the weather, just in case.

Qualifying went well for Derek. He came out in sixth place, meaning he’d be starting on the third row. Hopefully that would ease Stiles’ mind about one matter. Starting that far up front would make it harder for Derek to fall behind early on in the race. He was most worried about if Derek would be feeling more comfortable about passing cars during the race, as he’d struggled with it during practice.

Stiles had to practically hold Derek still during the national anthem. It was strange being the calm one when Derek was fidgeting all over the place. _Jesus, is this what Derek feels like with me half the time_ , he thought as he slapped at Derek’s twisting fingers for the fourth time. It was relief when they finally got Derek all buckled in the car, away from where the cameras could see his obvious nervousness.

Stiles gave him one last tiny squeeze to his shoulder before he scrambled over the pit wall with the rest of the crew and climbed up into the pit box. He jammed on his headset and fiddled with his laptop as he waited to hear the command for the drivers to start their engines. The roaring wall of sound when they did made his ribs vibrate in his chest.

The one pace lap they took around the four mile track felt like it went on for eons. Stiles spent half the time on the radio stopping whatever freakout Derek was having in it’s tracks. Then they were finally crossing the start/finish line and Derek was whizzing by, turning out of Stiles’ view after a few brief moments. It was what Stiles hated about road courses. He couldn’t keep his eyes on Derek the entire time, there was only the short section of the straightaway in front of pit road that he could watch. 

Sure they had spotters, but it still wasn’t quite enough to cover Road America’s extensive four miles. Scott, who was the full time spotter for all the races was positioned in the middle of the carousel where he could see most of the difficult turns. They had another man covering the area between turns one and three where they could see most of the longer straightaways. The third spotter was placed around turn thirteen, where they would be able to see the cars take the final few turns before making it around to the start/finish line.

Stiles also had a video feed up on his laptop, however there was no guarantee the cameras would actually be on Derek depending upon his position in the race. So he would be spending most of the race putting the disjointed pieces of the puzzle together and hoping that nothing bad happened in those moments where no one would be able to have their eyes on Derek’s car.

From what he could tell Derek’s car was plenty fast, he just seemed to have an anxiety attack every time he got too close to passing someone in one of the tight corners. All of his passes had happened on the long straightaways. He was still near the front of the pack, but if he hadn’t been letting so many opportunities to pass get away from him; Stiles thought they could actually be leading the race by now. It frustrated him, but he was unwilling to put Derek outside of his comfort zone. Doing so would only be increasing the chances of them ending up with a second DNF on their record. 

Stiles watched the crew closely as Derek came in for his first pitstop, exchanging four old tires for new ones and cramming as much gas as they could into his tank. One of the guys smoothly grabbed the corner of one of the windshield tear-offs, ripping it free at the same moment as the jackman dropped the car back to the pavement and ripped the jack free. Derek tore off pit road, careful not to speed until he crossed the line at the end of pit road.

By the time the rest of the field cycled through their pit stops Derek was back in the top five, holding his own against some of the road course specialists. Stiles felt a lit bit of pride balloon up in his chest every time he heard one of the announcers mention how impressed they were with the rookie at the front of the field. He felt even more smug when he noticed Derek passing by Jackson, who was going a lap down barely halfway through the race.

Knowing that this was a race that could very well come down to pit strategy, Stiles radioed Derek and told him to try and save fuel after his second stop. Maybe if they could stay out a few laps longer than their competitors they wouldn’t have to worry about saving fuel near the end and could race a little harder then instead of now. 

Just as Stiles had hoped, the cars in front of Derek came in to the pits first. Derek could only make it a few more laps if his calculations were correct, but at least now they’d be picking up a few bonus points for leading a lap. Derek crossed the finish line, collecting his five extra points and Stiles told him to come in on the next lap for his pit stop.

Derek didn’t even make it all the way around the track before the caution flag was thrown. Stiles looked confusedly at his video feed trying to determine the source of the caution. He hadn’t heard anything from the spotters. Then he heard the announcers state that it was raining over part of the track. Stiles looked up at the sky, with disbelieving eyes. He had completely forgotten about the weather, so absorbed in other aspects of the race.

By the time Derek was coming around the track to the pit area the rain was starting to come down over the whole track in large fat drops.The officials waved the red flag, stopping the race completely and waving for cars to come down pit road. The crew quickly helped Derek from the car, covering it up as he emerged to keep it as dry as possible from the rain.

“Dude,” Stiles whispered reverently to Derek as he climbed over the pit wall. “This may have been the best pit strategy decision I have ever made.”

“It’s probably just a shower,” Derek said, scowling slightly. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Even if we do get back to racing, you’ve been doing pretty well today. I told you that you’d be fine you big worry wart.” Stiles didn’t get to keep talking. The reporters were already making their way down to Derek’s pit stall, clearly wanting to talk to the race leader. He was about to slip away as Derek laughed nervously, saying that he doubted the rain was going to stick around. He didn’t have that kind of luck, but apparently they wanted to talk to Stiles, too.

He’d never been interviewed at a race before, mostly because he’d never actually played such an important part before. The reporters asked him why he’d decided to keep Derek out so long and what he planned to do if they got back out on the track. His head spun with the questions coming from every direction, but he finally managed to pull himself away on the pretense that he still had things to do.

Stiles high tailed it back to their hauler where he pulled out a long forgotten box of hats that had been stashed away for weeks. When Full Throttle had agreed to sponsor them for the rest of the season after Derek did well during those first five races, with the exception of Daytona, they had not only dropped off more free products, but also a box of hats that was intended for the crew to wear in Victory Lane if Derek ever won a race. He shoved the box under a stack of other stuff, doubting that that was going to happen anytime soon.

He knew, like what Derek had said, that he shouldn’t get his hopes up. This time, though, there was actually a chance that they might actually get to use these hats. There was no harm in being prepared, right? Stiles dragged the box back to their covered pit box, leaving it in a covered spot where it wouldn’t get wet and left to go join everyone in the garage where it was significantly less wet.

Stiles dug out his phone, pulling up his weather app to check the radar. It looked pretty spotty, but the weather had been pretty unpredictable all weekend so who knew. He’d just have to keep his fingers crossed.

Unlike some drivers, Derek didn’t have a fancy motorhome to go hang out in while he was waiting. Stiles and Derek ended up sitting in the back of their hauler, sandwiched in between the tool drawers and parts bins. They watch Netflix on Stiles’ phone, turning up the volume to hear the words over the constant drumming of the rain. 

After an hour of wait time and no sign of the rain letting up, they stretched their legs and found some food. The radar still looked like the storm might pass by, but the longer they waited, the more anxious Stiles got. Road America doesn’t have lights so there’s only so long they can wait before the race gets called.

The rain eventually let up, and the track dryers were out trying to dry off the track in record time. Stiles felt his stomach drop. Well, it was a nice thought. It was still almost another hour before the track was dry, but the pit stalls were teaming with life again, cars being uncovered and pit boxes going back up. Stiles was full of nervous energy as the officials prepare to restart the race.

The pace car made it’s way down pit road, ready to start the pace lap, when glistening drops begin to fall once more. Stiles let out a bubbling hysterical sort of half laugh at the sight of the rain. Not knowing if it’s just going to be a short sprinkle or something more, the crew scrambles over the wall, covering the car up again, this time with Derek still strapped inside. After fifteen minutes or so the officials seemingly gave up. There’s still rain falling from the sky and they won’t have enough time to dry the track off a second time and finish the remaining laps. 

Stiles nearly fell out of the pit box with excitement the moment they call the race. The crew ripped back the car cover enough for Derek to climb out to a roar of cheering from the entire team. Stiles tripped down out of the pit box, barely remembering to pull out the box of hats. He dashed around jamming them haphazardly on to crew members heads as they push the car towards victory lane.

Derek was coated in champagne and laughing when he wrapped his arms around Stiles and pulled him into the tightest hug of his life. Stiles hadn’t smiled this much since before he could remember. Derek kept dumbly telling the reporters that he never expected to win, especially at his first road course race. There was no way he could have beat those guys with more experience had the race been finished. Stiles still thought he could have done it anyway, but Derek was always downplaying his skills on camera.

They’re the last team to get their hauler loaded up. As soon as the car had been strapped in and the tools locked away most of the crew was heading back to the hotel bar to start celebrating. Stiles was still packing away a few last things when he found Derek waiting for him at the end of the hauler, leaning against the closed door of the spare uniform cabinet.

“Shouldn’t you be at the bar by now with everyone else? You’re kind of the star of the moment.”

“I’m getting there; I was talking with Laura,” Derek said with a soft smile. “Besides, you’re giving me far too much credit. You’re the one who made the decision to wait to pit. It’s just as much your victory as it is mine.”

Stiles snorted. “Thanks, I guess. I’m about done here, though, so if you want, you can ride with me back to the hotel.” He moved to the end of the hauler, where Derek was. The narrowness of the aisle between the shelves and cabinets forcing them close together. He wasn’t sure what made him do it. Maybe it was just the feeling deep down in his gut that nothing could go wrong today.

Stiles stretched forward a fraction of an inch, covering Derek’s lips with his own. His hand reached forward, intending to twist his fingers in Derek’s shirt, when instead he was suddenly planting it in Derek’s chest pushing them apart as the back door to the hauler slid open.

“Stiles,” his dad said sternly. His face was somewhere between anger and surprise, or maybe it was just something Stiles didn’t recognize. “Stiles, I need to talk to you,” John said after a long, very awkward pause. “Derek, if you could come by my office on Monday, I have some things to discuss with you as well.”

“Yes, sir,” Derek choked out before sliding past John out of the hauler. John shut the door firmly behind him.

“Stiles,” he said again in that firm tone of voice that Stiles had come to associate with him screwing up. “What the hell did I just see?”

“Um, are you referring to the race today or--” he trailed off at the look his father gave him. “Okay, I don’t know. I just sort of kissed him for like half a second and I don’t even know why. Some days I’m not even sure if we’re friends, but other days things are actually really good. I don’t even know if he likes me like that, but I just--”

“Stiles.” John practically barked, cutting into his ramble. “I don’t care why you did it, I just don’t think it should be happening at all. Derek is technically our employee. It’s more than just that, though. The two of you have to work together very closely. I don’t want you screwing this up because your feelings got in the way. I’m not saying no, kid. I’m just saying be sure about what you want before you jump into this. Remember that your actions can affect everyone on the team.”

“I know, Dad. It was stupid. I’ll make sure not to make things weird or anything.” Stiles rubbed tiredly at his forehead. “Did you want anything else?” 

“I just wanted to tell you I’m proud of you for today. I know Derek’s getting all the recognition, but you should be pretty proud of yourself. You did really well today.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Stiles replied, managing a weak smile. “I think I’m going to head back to the hotel now. I’m actually pretty tired,” he lied.

“Okay, kid. See you later.”

Stiles pushed his way into the packed bar thirty minutes later, ordering a beer before searching the crowd for Scott. What he wanted was to talk to Derek, but that wasn’t going to happen in a bar packed full of people. He got a number of congratulatory slaps to the back as he squeezed his way to the table he spotted Scott and Isaac at. The two of them hooted cheerfully at his appearance, covering him with hugs and happy little arm punches.

He put on a smile and let them go on with recounting every detail of the race while he nodded and made encouraging noises at all the right points, not really feeling up to much more. He spotted Derek across the room at the bar, where Derek was getting a continuous stream of congratulations from team members and strangers alike. The smiles on his face didn’t quite meet his eyes and Stiles felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

After his second beer he managed to pry himself away from Scott and Isaac, repeating that he was feeling pretty tired and wanted to get some sleep. He walked up to the second floor, the celebratory sounds from the bar fading as he walked slowly up the stairs. He laid in bed in silence for a long time hoping the door would open and he could say something to Derek. Apologize or explain himself or something. Derek had left so quickly he didn’t even know what was going on in his head.

Stiles fell asleep still facing the door, waiting for Derek. For the first time ever, he woke up before Derek as well. He sat in the dark silence of the hotel room debating whether to wait for Derek to wake up or just pack his bag and leave. Nerves got the best of him, and he found himself hurriedly shoving his clothes in his bag, hoping Derek wouldn’t wake up as he was in the middle of leaving.

He packed his bag into the back of their rental car, and ate breakfast alone, waiting for the rest of the team to come down to check out. The car ride to the airport was strange. Scott and Isaac talked animately the whole way, while Stiles and Derek sat quietly in the back seat, carefully not looking at each other. Somehow Derek and Stiles didn’t end up near each other on the plane home, either. Stiles had the sneaking suspicion that Derek traded seats with someone on the team.

It wasn’t until Monday afternoon that Stiles managed to corner Derek by himself for more than a minute. “Can we talk about--” he stammered nervously.

“It’s fine, Stiles,” Derek said stiffly, cutting him off mid sentence. Can we just forget about it?”

“Oh, um yeah, I guess.”

“Good,” Derek said, brushing by him, leaving Stiles more frustrated than ever.

From then on out, it was strictly business between the two of them. Stiles stopped booking them in the same hotel room, instead rooming with Scott and putting Derek with Isaac. He stopped putting their seats next to each other when he booked their flights. He chose to ride in a separate van. When they had to be together, they pretended like everything was all the same, but it wasn’t.

It was so much worse than when Jackson had driven for them. At least then he knew Jackson was a douchebag and would rather cut off his own arm with a rusty hack saw than spend time with Stiles. Stiles had spent so much time with Derek this season that he was struggling to fill all the cracks in his routine that had been previously filled with Derek. He had been friends with Derek, or so he had thought, and now they weren’t much better than strangers.


	10. Chapter 10

Stiles’ only consolation in the matter was that at least Derek’s driving never suffered. If anything Derek was doing better than ever. Ever since his win at Elkhart Lake Derek had surpassed the team’s goal of fifteenth place in the points standings. He had yet to break into the top ten, but he stayed above fifteenth, fluctuating between twelfth and fourteenth for weeks.

Stiles even thought about talking to Laura, but then again she was Derek’s sister and if Derek didn’t like him anymore, Stiles couldn’t think of a legitimate reason for Laura to care about him. The summer wore on into fall and before he knew it the season was almost over.

Their second to last race was one of the few on the west coast. A second race at Phoenix International Raceway. Laura came to have one last chance to see Derek in action. She kept giving Stiles strange looks everytime he came up with another excuse to be wherever Derek wasn’t. The last thing he felt like doing was explaining to Laura why Derek didn’t talk to him anymore.

The last race of the season took place in Florida, this time in Miami. Before the race Derek was sitting twelfth in points and unless something terrible happened, it was looking like he was going to also end up as rookie of the year as well. Technically speaking, it was Stilinski Racing’s best season to date.

Derek was struggling with the car all night long, growing ever more frustrated as the laps went by. Stiles tried to talk him through it, just trying to get him to do his best without completely wrecking the car. He didn’t quite understand why Derek was so frustrated. It was the last race of the season and there was only so much he could do to finish higher in the points standings. It wasn’t like Derek suddenly had a shot at winning the championship.

Derek finished the race in tenth place, not bad considering how much he had struggled with the car. It was even enough to bump Derek up one last spot in the points standings to eleventh place. He should have been happy. Instead, the second Derek got out of his car in the garage he stormed off towards the hauler.

“What the fuck?” Stiles muttered under his breath, following Derek. There would be reporters looking for him. Jesus Christ what was he pissed about now? He ripped the back door of the hauler open approximately five seconds after Derek had slammed it shut. “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed. “What the hell are you mad about now?”

“I couldn’t fucking do good enough. I was so close and I tried so hard, but I can’t ever do good enough.” He slammed his fist against the top of the toolbox and pressed his head into the cabinets.

“What are you talking about, Derek?” He was a little taken aback that Derek was telling him anything at all. Outside of radio contact during the race, this was probably the most he had heard out of Derek in months. “How can you say you didn’t do well? Our goal for this season was to make it to fifteenth place in points, and you just ended the season in eleventh. You’re also the rookie of the year. How can you possibly think that’s not good enough? You’re the best driver we’ve ever had.”

“I just needed one more spot. I needed tenth place, Stiles.”

“And just what kind of difference would that make? I know you already got offers from other teams for next year. It’s not like you don’t have a future in NASCAR. So explain to me why one fucking position matters that much to you.” Stiles was losing patience.

“I made a deal with your dad,” Derek said, barely above a whisper.

“What sort of deal?”

“He said if I could finish in the top ten in points this season that he would let me date you.”

“Excuse me?” Stiles said with disbelief. Derek didn’t repeat himself. “I’m not a fucking Disney princess, Derek. I’m not the prize at the end of the level, and I’m sure as fuck not a child anymore. Last time I checked I made my own fucking decisions about who I can and cannot date.”

“Stiles it’s not like that,” Derek pleaded. “I know it’s your decision I just--. You and your dad are so close. I would have given anything to have that kind of relationship with my dad. He wasn’t happy after Road America. I didn’t want to be the reason you and your dad were fighting. I thought that if I had his approval then--”

“Stop. Just stop,” Stiles interrupted. “I don’t have time for this right now. You have people fucking waiting to interview you. Don’t forget this.” He shoved the can of Full Throttle into Derek’s chest and threw the hauler door open once more, leaving Derek standing alone in the hauler with his mouth agape and a confused expression.

Stiles avoided Derek the rest of that weekend. He was gone by the time Derek finished his interviews. In fact, Stiles didn’t even have to avoid him for long at all. As soon as he was done with his duties at the track he went straight back to his hotel room and started throwing his clothes haphazardly into his bag. He left his key on the table and scribbled a hasty note to Scott telling him that he was leaving early.

He took a taxi to the airport and took the first flight he could find. He didn’t even care if that meant he’d have a four hour layover at Houston. At least he wouldn’t have to be in the same fucking city as Derek Hale. While he waited in the terminal he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. The picture that came up on the screen was of Derek. It was this stupid picture Stiles had taken of him one day when he’d somehow gotten his harness buckles stuck together the wrong way and had been making this awful constipated face as Scott had tried to pry them apart. 

He’d chased Stiles around the garage for twenty minutes as soon as he’d gotten unstuck, demanding that Stiles delete it. He only agreed to let him keep it when Stiles threatened to send it to Laura. He did anyway, but Derek didn’t need to know that.

Stiles quickly hit the ignore button. A minute later his phone started buzzing again. He hit ignore just as quickly. Another minute passed, but this time his phone only vibrated once. Derek had sent him a text this time.

_Stiles, please. I just want to talk to you._

The thing is Stiles had had quite enough talking. He didn’t want to talk to anybody right now, least of all Derek. He wanted to be home already. He wanted to forget this entire season. He sighed and texted Derek back anyway.

_Too Late. Getting on my flight now._

It felt a little bit harsh. Then again, the first thing he had typed out was a simple _fuck off,_ so this was considerably kinder. He turned his phone off the second after he sent the text out despite the fact that his flight didn’t start boarding for another twenty minutes. He didn’t care to see how Derek responded at the moment.

He turned his phone back on in Houston. His tablet was dead because he hadn’t had time to charge it and he didn’t want to spend the next fours hours just staring out the window. Curiosity got the best of him and he scrolled through the new messages in his inbox.

Scott: _Is everything OK dude? Text me if you need anything._

Derek: _OK. Can we talk when I get back then?_

Laura: _I knew my brother was an idiot, but I didn’t know he was this stupid. Call me when you get home?_

Erica: _Isaac told me you left early. What time is your flight getting in?_

Erica was the only one he bothered texting back. In the end he turned his phone off once again and bought an overpriced paperback from one of the airport stores to keep him occupied. It was late when he got home and it felt even later after crossing three time zones to get there. He planned on crawling into bed and quite possibly never leaving again.

What he didn’t plan on was finding Erica waiting for him on his front steps, with a bag slung over her shoulder and a pissed off expression like it was Stiles’ fault she was standing on his doorstep at 11:30 on a Saturday night.

“Erica, why are you here?” he asked tiredly. “I really just want to go to bed.”

“I heard about what happened. So I thought we could get drunk, eat a bunch of ice cream, and watch Days of Thunder.”

“How the hell did you hear about this already?” he asked, nudging her aside to unlock his front door.

“Boyd told me.”

“Boyd?”

“Yeah, Boyd. You know, Derek’s best friend. We met him that first time we saw Derek race.”

“I know who he is Erica. I’m wondering why he’s telling you about this stuff.”

Erica dumped her bag on the kitchen counter, pulling out a bottle of wine and a tub of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. “I’ve been dating Boyd since July, Stiles. He tells me everything.” She jabbed a spoon into the ice cream, handing it off to him with an amused expression.

“Since July, huh?” He fiddled with the spoon sticking up from the ice cream. “How come you never told me?”

“You’ve kind of been in your own little world for a while now. We haven’t exactly talked much recently.” She shooed him to the living room, bringing the wine and DVD with her. 

“Sorry,” Stiles apologized, plopping down on his couch.

“It’s fine,” she shrugged. “I knew something weird was going on between you and Derek, but I had no idea he hadn’t been talking to you at all. You should have told me.”

He shrugged, biting his lip. “I thought I was the one that screwed up. I was the one that kissed him and then he got all weird. I thought I freaked him out or something so I figured it would just be better if I gave him some space.”

Erica let out a breath through her nose. “Are you going to talk to him,” she asked in a quiet voice.

Stiles shoved a spoonful of ice cream in his mouth, giving him a reason not to answer immediately. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I mean, ever since he stopped talking to me I wanted nothing more than to just have us at least be friends again. Part of me just wants to say fuck it and pretend nothing bad ever happened. Then again, he stopped talking to me for four months. If he couldn’t talk to me then, how can I trust that he won’t do something like that again? Mostly, I think I just want to ignore the problem and hope it goes away.”

Erica flashed him an annoyed look as she worked the cork out of the bottle. “I’m not saying you should forgive him or anything if you don’t want to, but I know how Derek feels about you. Granted he’s done a pretty shit job of showing you, but I think you should at least give him a chance to talk.”

Stiles huffed and stabbed his ice cream a little harder with his spoon. “He got a contract offer from Rick Hendrick, you know. What’s the point in even trying to work this out? He’s going to be leaving anyway. Then he’ll just be the competition.”

“You don’t know that,” Erica reasoned. “He hasn’t accepted any offers yet.”

“He’d be an idiot not to accept Hendrick’s offer. Even if he goes somewhere else, we’re the only team on the west coast. So what’s the point?” He reiterated.

Erica gave up on even trying to reason with him more. She shut her mouth, poured the wine, and put the movie in. 

The bottle of wine was gone by the time the movie was half over, and what remained of the ice cream had been abandoned on the coffee table long ago. Stiles had shifted on the couch until eventually his head was pillowed in Erica’s lap. She ran her fingers gently through his hair, pretending not to notice the tears quietly streaking down Stiles’ face. It reminded him of what his mother used to do when he was sick as a kid. 

Stiles had always kind of hoped that he would end up having a driver like Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder. At one point he’d imagined Derek being like that even though the reason Cole knew so little about NASCAR was because he was a former open wheel driver. He thought he’d get to teach Derek all the secrets and then he’d suddenly be winning races because he was just that good. It had almost started out like that, but this was real life and there was no happy ending movie magic.

Erica tucked him into bed after the movie, promising that she was going to check on him later. Then threatening him that he was not allowed to mope for too long. She would come and find him, and he would not like it when she did.

He spent all of Sunday on his couch in sweatpants feeling sorry for himself. He didn’t bother turning on the final cup race, not much caring to think about anything NASCAR related for as long as possible. Instead he brought up his Netflix account, marathoning episodes of Psych while stuffing his face with whatever junk food he could find hidden around his kitchen. He fell asleep there too, tangled up in a sea of blankets and discarded candy wrappers. 

A sharp knocking noise woke him up on Monday morning. He had texted his dad telling him he was taking the day off the night before, so he had no idea who it could be. Ignoring it didn’t seem to make it go away either. It was probably Erica, and knowing her she was just going to keep knocking until Stiles answered the door. His hand was reaching for the doorknob when the voice he heard made him freeze, arm still hanging in midair.

“Stiles, please. I just want to talk,” Derek called through the door. “I know you’re here. Erica told me you weren’t coming in today.”

He couldn’t move. His brain flipped back and forth between wanting to let Derek in and never speaking to him again so he continued to stand there frozen just behind the door. There was a rustling noise and a soft thump, as Derek sat down against the outside of the door. Like he was drawn by a magnet, Stiles quietly curled up on the floor, hugging his knees tightly to his body.

“I guess I don’t blame you for hating me,” Derek said, barely audible through the door. “I kind of hate me, too. I’m not good at this. I’m not good at people. I spent years after my family died doing everything I could not to let people in, but you just wouldn’t go away.” There was a sharp thunk as Derek let his head drop back against the door.

“You talked too much and no matter what I did you wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. You even went and found my sister. I tried so hard not to like you, but you’re the first person in a long time to ever care about what happens to me. You did so damn much for me and I couldn’t figure out why I deserved any of it. I’ve been fucking miserable the last few months without you and I know that’s my own fault.” Stiles could feel his chest constricting with each and every word that poured from Derek’s mouth only serving to confuse him even more.

“I know I said this was about the deal I made with your dad, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. I just used that as an excuse. An excuse to push you away. I got scared. I’m so scared of losing more people that I care about that I pushed you away. I couldn’t lose you if I never really had you, right?” He let out a bitter laugh.

“I guess, I really screwed that up. I told Laura everything, too. I don’t think she’s talking to me at the moment. This is probably the stupidest mistake I’ve ever made, and if you’ve let Laura tell you any stories about me, well then you know that that’s pretty bad.” There was a long pause and Stiles began to wonder if Derek had somehow left.

“I came here today because I’m signing a contract for next season tomorrow,” he started back up. “Well, actually it’s for the next two seasons. I guess, I just wanted to talk to you about it. I think it’s what I want, but you may have noticed that I don’t have the best decision making skills. You’re supposed to be the brains of this operation, aren’t you? I figured you might have some advice, but I guess you’re not ready to talk just yet.”

Derek sighed. “And I’ve been talking to your front door for twenty minutes, so maybe I should just leave already.” There was more rustling as Derek got to his feet. A minute later Stiles heard a car starting and driving away. He sat there on the cold tiles of his entryway too confused to think about moving.

He slept on his couch once more, but this time his phone alarm woke him up early enough to shower and put on something other than sweatpants. Stiles barely noticed the drive to work. First he was at home, then suddenly he was sitting in the parking lot, jeep idling, like there had been nothing in between. He pulled his keys out of the ignition like a zombie, walking past Erica to his office without noticing his surroundings.

His office was quiet and he spent the first half hour or so idly reading through e-mails he had to catch up on. With the season newly finished, most of the team wasn’t around. They’d finished clean up on the cars the day before and the building was eerily silent. It startled him when his father knocked on his door. He leaned there, looking troubled, much the way he had only a year earlier.

“There’s a driver I’ve been looking at for next season.” John said quietly. “He’s in the conference room right now. I’d like you to meet him.”

Stiles nodded tightly, his throat closing up. He knew Derek wasn’t coming back. He’d known for a while now, but it had been so much easier to deny until now. Until he was facing the reality of a new driver, and starting over once again.

He followed John to the conference room, trying to school his face into a calmer expression. The world dropped out from beneath his feet when the door opened and he saw Derek sitting at the end of the conference table.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, barely above a whisper.

“I tried to tell you yesterday. Your dad--your dad offered me a contract to drive for Stilinski Racing for two more years. I told him I wouldn’t sign the papers without talking to you first. I know you’re mad at me and if you can’t do this then I’ll leave. I have other offers. but if you’re okay with it I’d like to stay.” 

“Dad, can I have a minute alone with Derek?” His father nodded and shut the door quietly behind him. Stiles sat down across from Derek and stared down at his hands. “You’re an idiot, you know that, right?”

“I seem to be hearing that a lot lately.” Derek said with a wan smile.

“Why the hell do you want to stay here, Derek? As much as I love my team I have no illusions about where our place is in NASCAR. We’re a stepping stone. Drivers from lower series get picked up by us and they use us to get noticed by the teams they actually want to race for. We’re the bottom of the food chain. I know you got an offer from Hendrick. Why on earth would you pass up a chance to race for one of the top teams in the business to stay here?”

“It is a pretty good offer--racing for Hendrick, that is. I’d probably have better cars. I’d have teammates to rely on in races. It would probably earn me a lot more fans, too. The thing is, I’m not really sure I care about any of those things. I never thought I was capable of any of this. I’m here because some stubborn young crew chief made me get my life together. Hendrick may have everything else, but he doesn’t have you, Stiles. I don’t know if I can do this without you.”

Stiles stared harder at his hands, trying to blink away the moisture gathering in his eyes. “You don’t have to stay for me, Derek.” he said roughly. “There’s other drivers. There always will be. We’ll be fine.”

“Yeah fine, Stiles. You’re only ever going to be fine if you have a new rookie to train every season. You’re going to be stuck at the bottom of the food chain forever until someone breaks that cycle. You’re never going to be great. I’ve talked with your dad about this. If I can have another season at least as good, if not better than this year, there might be enough money to add a second car. I want to help you, Stiles. You did so much for me, it’s time I do something for you.”

“That all sound great for the team and all, but what about us,” he asked voice cracking. 

“I don’t know,” Derek replied. “Honestly, I’m not sure how to fix this. ‘I’m sorrys’ don’t really mean much after what I’ve done, but if you’re willing to give me a second chance I promise that I’ll be better this time. I don’t want to hurt you again, Stiles.”

“Is it true that Laura’s not talking to you anymore?”

“You heard that?” Derek asked with surprise.

“Yeah, I heard everything,” Stiles said, finally looking up from his hands. “I was about to open the door because I thought you were Erica. Then you just started talking and I didn’t know what to say to you. I just kind of froze up and then you were leaving and it was too late. Did you mean it all?”

“Yeah, I did. And yes, Laura isn’t talking to me anymore. She won’t answer my calls. I tried driving down to her apartment last night to talk to her. I stood outside her apartment knocking until her neighbors got pissed and kicked me out of the building. She texted me after I left and told me she wasn’t saying a word to me until I fixed it.”

“And what if I say no?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I thought my sister never wanted to see me again,” he answered softly.

Stiles sighed at the hurt expression on Derek’s face. “If you sign that contract,” Stiles started, jabbing his fingers at the papers in between them, “then you have to promise me something.” 

“Whatever you want,” Derek said with raw honesty written all over his face.

“You have to talk to me. You have to talk to me about everything, Derek. I need to know if somethings wrong. You can’t shut me out again. Especially not for four months. I can’t do that.”

“I won’t, Stiles. I promise. No more secrets, or avoiding each other, or whatever else. I’ll tell you everything. I trust you.”

Stiles palmed the table, pushing himself up out of his chair. “Okay,” he whispered. “I’m on board.”

Derek stood up, too, inching his way closer to Stiles, fingers brushing against the edge of Stiles’ shirt still not sure if he was allowed. When Stiles didn’t move away, Derek slipped his hand firmly around Stiles’ hipbone drawing him in to his chest. Derek wrapped his arms around him tightly and pressed his face into his hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. 

“Idiot,” Stiles choked into his shoulder. “I’m still going to be your boss, though, you still have to do what I say.”

“When have I ever not listened to you, Stiles?” Derek said, smiling. “God, I would have even gone to that stupid carriage museum in Elkhart Lake if you had wanted to.”

Stiles half laughed, half cried. Derek just squeezed him a little tighter. He didn’t want to let go, but they couldn’t stay like that forever. His dad was still waiting. Apparently they had a contract to sign. 

“I guess, I should go get my dad now,” Stiles said, reluctantly pulling away.

“Wait,” Derek said, reaching out for him again. He cupped Stiles’ face with one hand, running his thumb gently up the line of Stiles’ jaw. Without warning, he ducked in, crashing their mouths together. Derek’s teeth scraped gently over his bottom lip, followed by the soft heat of his tongue. It didn’t last nearly as long as Stiles wanted it to, but to be fair he didn’t really want it to end. What mattered was that it was a hundred times better than their first kiss and this time Stiles knew he’d actually get to do it again.

“Sorry, I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” Derek whispered at his temple.

The smile Stiles gave him might have been the first real smile to cross his face since June. He pulled away once more, this time actually making it out of the room.

“Dad,” he called. “You can come back in now.”

The three of them passed a pen between them, taking turns signing the necessary pages of the contract. John told Stiles to take the rest of the day off. There was nothing here that needed to get done immediately. Derek took him out to lunch, which was only step one in his get Stiles to love me again plan. There were curly fries, so he was off to a pretty good start. 

Erica gave him a wide, knowing smile as they left hand in hand. Stiles had the sinking feeling that there were somehow going to be terrifying double dates with her and Boyd. It was going to be an interesting season all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is technically the last chapter of the story, however I am working on an epilogue. Since I didn't actually get to write much of Derek and Stiles as a couple I wanted to add a little bit of what their future will be like!

**Author's Note:**

> Come check me out on Tumblr! My personal blog: [Here](http://aseriesofbadlifechoices.tumblr.com/) My Teen Wolf blog: [Here](http://im-the-sourwolf-now.tumblr.com/)


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